The resignations came after the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, was said to have expressed doubts about the case, and amid a monthlong pause in the presentation of evidence to a grand jury.
... The stunning development comes not long after the high-stakes inquiry appeared to be gaining momentum, and throws its future into serious doubt.
The prosecutors, Carey R. Dunne and Mark F. Pomerantz, submitted their resignations after the new Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, indicated to them that he had doubts about moving forward with a case against Mr. Trump, the people said.
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Without Mr. Bragg’s commitment to move forward, the prosecutors late last month postponed a plan to question at least one witness before the grand jury, one of the people said.
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...without Mr. Dunne, a high-ranking veteran of the office who has been closely involved with the inquiry for years, and Mr. Pomerantz, a leading figure in New York legal circles who was enlisted to work on it, the yearslong investigation could peter out....
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Mr. Bragg’s office must meet a higher bar [than the parallel civil investigation by the New York state Attorney General] to bring a criminal case and has encountered a number of challenges in pursuing Mr. Trump, including its inability thus far to persuade any Trump Organization executives to cooperate.
And that is what it is all about. There are two parts to a prosecutor's ethical obligation in charging. 1) (S)He must have a subjective belief beyond a reasonable doubt of the suspect's guilt. 2) Objectively there must be enough evidence of guilt that a reasonable jury could convict on the standard of beyond a reasonable doubt.
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... a criminal case would likely be difficult to prove. The documents, known as statements of financial condition, contain a number of disclaimers, including acknowledgments that Mr. Trump’s accountants had neither audited nor authenticated his claims.
And the prosecutors have thus far been unable to convince Mr. Trump’s long-serving chief financial officer to cooperate with the investigation, depriving them of the type of insider witness whose testimony can be crucial to complicated white collar criminal cases.
