Former Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. has revealed that the Justice Department asked his office to “stand down” in its probe of Donald Trump’s 2016 $130,000 hush money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels.
Vance did not mention any names, but said the request came from the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York. At the time, Bill Barr was the U.S. Attorney General, and Geoffrey Berman was the U.S. Attorney for the SDNY. Both have some explaining to do about the request that Vance “stand down.”
Vance’s remarks knock down a key GOP talking point, claiming that the current Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg Jr. had resurrected a weak “zombie case” against Trump that had already been rejected by his predecessor.
In an MSNBC interview on Sunday, Vance told host Jen Psaki:
“The Southern District of New York at the same time as ourselves at the Manhattan District Attorney’s office were looking at the so-called `hush money payment’ issue. And then we learned from the Southern District of New York that they asked us to `stand down.’ And by `stand down’ I mean they were communicating that they had this ongoing investigation and they wished that we put our efforts on hold while they completed their investigation.
“And obviously that was a discretionary call by me whether or not to do that, but I felt it was entirely appropriate. Obviously the Southern District of New York is an excellent organization with great leaders and prosecutors and I felt it was appropriate for me to press the pause button."
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MSNBC legal analyst Renato Mariotti said Vance’s revelation raised questions about the role of Barr and Trump in getting the Manhattan DA’s office to hold off on its hush money investigation.
MSNBC legal analyst Andrew Weissmann wrote that one GOP line of attack against Bragg was that Vance had declined to prosecute Trump in the hush-money case, and that Bragg is “so out of control that he is bringing political charges rejected by calmer and cooler heads, even the Democratic district attorney who immediately preceded him.”
“That narrative is false, as was exposed by Psaki on Sunday in her trenchant interview with Vance, who “broke his post-DA silence,” Weissmann wrote.
Vance had begun his investigation into the hush money payment in 2018, after The Wall Street Journal reported that Michael Cohen, Trump’s then-personal lawyer and fixer, had coordinated a $130,000 payment to Daniels prior to the 2016 presidential election.
Cohen later that year pleaded guilty to a number of charges, including tax evasion and campaign finance violations, brought by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. In a December 2018 sentencing memo, the government wrote that Cohen “acted in coordination with and at the direction of Individual-1,” an apparent reference to Trump. Cohen was sentenced to three years in federal prison and ordered to pay a $50,000 fine.
But in July 2019, the federal government indicated that it had “effectively concluded” the investigation and that future charges were unlikely, which The New York Times described as a likely “legal victory” for Trump.
In his interview on Inside with Jen Psaki, Vance added:
"I was surprised, after Michael Cohen pleaded guilty, that the investigation from the Southern District on that issue did not go forward. By that time we had moved on to other matters."
These other matters included an investigation of the financial activities of Trump and the Trump Organization, including manipulating the valuations of properties to gain benefits from banks, insurers, and tax agencies. There was also a probe into non-taxed, off-the-books perks provided to top officials in Trump’s businesses.
It took Vance’s office nearly two years—in a case that went to the U.S. Supreme Court—to gain access to Trump’s tax returns, and that led to indictments of CFO Allen Weisselberg and the Trump Organization before Vance left office at the end of 2021. Last year, Bragg successfully obtained guilty verdicts in both these cases.
According to Weissmann, Vance also indicated in his interview with Psaki that the case against Trump regarding fraud in property valuations was not ready to seek an indictment. His lead prosecutor in this case, Mark Pomerantz, had claimed that Vance had directed his team to seek an indictment, and resigned after Bragg decided the case was not ready to prosecute.
Weissman wrote:
“If that is true, then it would make Pomerantz’s ultimatum to Bragg to greenlight the indictment just a few weeks later that much more outlandish. And it would make his characterizations in his leaked resignation letter and his book even worse, since in neither does he report that the investigation was simply not ready, as Vance told Psaki.”
Here is the full interview with Vance from Psaki’s show: