Suppose it is assumed that a sitting President cannot be indicted. If the statute of limitations would expire before the President’s term is over, could the indictment be made and postponed somehow? I believe they have indicted DNA when they didn’t know who the suspect was. Could “Individual 1” be indicted, for example?
There was an odd little news story a few months ago. Apparently a sealed envelope has been filed with the Federal District Court of Southern New York, in the matter of Michael Cohen. The news media haven’t been able to find out which of the parties (Cohen or the prosecutors) filed the sealed envelope, nor have they been able to find out what’s in it.
Purely blue-skying here, but what if as a compromise between the official DOJ position that they can’t indict a sitting president, and the rule of law/constitutional argument that no-one is immune from the criminal law, they’ve issued an indictment against Individual-1 for the campaign funding allegations, but have sealed it, dated it, and filed it away until he is no longer the President?
That would respect his role as head of the executive, but also preserve the principle that everyone is accountable to the law. It may also prevent a statute of limitations argument from Individual-1, since if that’s what’s in the envelope, the indictment was issued before the five year limitation period expired.
I don’t know if this bears on the question (up to a court to decide, I suppose). In PA where I grew up, the statute of limitations was suspended for any period in which the suspect was not in the state and not subject to the jurisdiction thereof. It could be argued that if the sitting president cannot be indicted then the statute is suspended until he becomes indictable. That is an argument, anyway. Not sure how a court would react. And not sure if it works that way federally. Only that it was the case in PA 60 years ago.
I don’t think it is legally true that a sitting President cannot be indicted. I think it is merely policy of the Justice Department that a sitting President will not be indicted. This is often misconstrued as that the Justice Department says that the siting President cannot be indicted, but that “cannot” is not necessarily a legal reason, but a practical reason. Thus, there would be no reason for the statute of limitations to be tolled with respect to the crime, as there is nothing legally stopping prosecutors from pursuing a case; what’s stopping them is only the bureaucracy of the DoJ being part of the executive branch and thus refusing to shoot itself in the head, even if it’s the diseased part that needs removing and unlike in humans can be easily replaced.