The end of Cy Vance and the downfall of Donald Trump

| 11:53 am EST March 12, 2021
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Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance, deep in the midst of bringing a widely documented criminal case against Donald Trump, has announced to the New Yorker that he won’t seek reelection. So what’s going on here?

For starters, this was completely expected. Vance hadn’t taken any basic steps toward seeking reelection. It’s been fairly clear for awhile that he would end up handing off the Trump case to his successor. Based on the nature of the local politics, the next Manhattan District Attorney will almost certainly be a Democrat, and therefore will certainly move forward with the criminal case against Trump. But why is Vance stepping away, instead of seeking another term so he can be the one to prosecute Trump?

Cy Vance has an ugly past history of failing to seek indictments against powerful New Yorkers, ranging from Harvey Weinstein to Donald Trump’s kids, and those same individuals have had a habit of donating to Vance’s reelection campaigns accordingly. Back in 2018 the New York Daily News reported that the FBI was looking at whether these donations to Vance were bribes. Not long after this, reports surfaced that Vance was pursuing a comprehensive criminal case against Trump, confirmed by subpoenas that went out from his grand jury, and the start of the court battle to obtain Trump’s tax returns.

Palmer Report has always suspected that Vance had decided to criminally pursue Donald Trump as a way of taking the heat off himself. After all, the Feds would have a harder time taking Vance down for allegedly taking bribes from powerful corrupt people in exchange for non-prosecution, if Vance was visibly taking down Trump, the most powerful corrupt person in the nation.

So why is Cy Vance stepping away now? He did tell the New Yorker that he plans to make the charging decision against Donald Trump himself before he leaves office. Vance wouldn’t announce he’s dropping the case against Trump just before another DA comes in, because the next DA would just pick the case back up anyway. This means Vance can only be planning to announce that he’s criminally charging Trump, so he can then step away and let the next DA handle the prosecution. Notably, Vance recently hired an outside attorney with a white collar mob case background to help prosecute. Now that move looks like a bridge to help carry the case over to the new DA.

It’s entirely possible that Vance feels he’s done enough to keep himself out of legal trouble by building such a comprehensive criminal case against Donald Trump, but he doesn’t want to stick around for the prosecution for fear that the focus might shift back to his own past questionable deeds. That means Vance will get partial credit for taking Trump down, even though it’ll be the next DA doing the prosecuting.

In any case, the end of Cy Vance’s tenure in no way alters our expectation that Donald Trump will be indicted, arrested, and put on criminal trial in Manhattan. If anything, Vance’s decision to do the interview and announce his retirement at this particular time can potentially be seen as a sign that Vance has essentially completed the criminal case against Trump.