Prosecutor investigating Trump won’t run again
NEW YORK — Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., a veteran prosecutor overseeing a criminal investigation into former President Donald Trump, said Friday that he won’t seek re-election, opting against a primary fight with progressive candidates who say he’s a relic and not a reformer.
Mr. Vance made the announcement in a memo to staffers, ending months of speculation about his future and almost certainly guaranteeing it’ll be a brand-new D.A. who sees the Trump case through. His term expires at the end of the year.
Mr. Vance, a Democrat, counted Harvey Weinstein’s rape conviction a year ago among his achievements but faced criticism over other highprofile cases, including dropping rape charges against French financier Dominique Strauss-Kahn in 2011 and declining to prosecute Ivanka and Donald Trump Jr. over fraud allegations in 2012.
“I never imagined myself as District Attorney for decades like my predecessors. I never thought of this as my last job, even though it’s the best job and biggest honor I’ll ever have. I said twelve years ago that change is fundamentally good and necessary for any institution,” Mr. Vance, 66, wrote.
His decision not to seek re-election was widely anticipated, but he held off while the U.S. Supreme Court weighed whether his office could obtain Mr. Trump’s tax records. The court ruled in Mr. Vance’s favor last month.
Some of the Democrats
campaigning to replace Mr. Vance want to slash the office’s budget, cut staff and skip prosecutions for a wider range of low-level offenses. Eight candidates are on the ballot for the June primary, an election likely to decide his successor because Manhattan is so heavily Democratic.
As D. A., Mr. Vance ended most marijuana possession and turnstile jumping prosecutions, slashing the cases handled by his office by nearly 60%, to about 42,000 in 2019. He embraced diversionary programs for firsttime offenders and established a unit to remedy wrongful convictions.
The Supreme Court ruling on Mr. Trump’s taxes was a capstone for his tenure, ending an 18-month fight with Mr. Trump’s lawyers and bolstering a grand jury investigation that has drawn worldwide attention.
Mr. Vance’s investigation includes examining whether Mr. Trump or his businesses lied about the value of assets to gain favorable loan terms and tax benefits and hush-money payments paid to women on his behalf.