Crime

Florida Preparing To Florida Up Trump Extradition If New York Indicts

Could it get stupider? You bet your gator!

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(Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

If Florida Governor Ron DeSantis wakes up tomorrow morning to find that the state of New York has indicted Donald Trump and is demanding extradition, what will he do?

Politico reports that authorities in Palm Beach are contemplating just that in light of reports that Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance’s investigation of Donald Trump’s business has kicked into high gear after the office finally got its hands on eight years of financial records.

Interstate extraditions are usually a pro forma matter. But this being Florida, of course there’s a weird, hanging chad wrinkle to complicate matters. To wit, Florida grants the governor some discretion over whether to comply with an interstate extradition request. And Florida’s governor is Trump superfan Ron DeSantis.

While “it is the duty of the Governor of this state to have arrested and delivered up to the executive authority of any other state of the United States any person charged in that state with treason, felony, or other crime, who has fled from justice and is found in this state,” he may also “call upon the Department of Legal Affairs or any prosecuting officer in this state to investigate or assist in investigating the demand, and to report to him or her the situation and circumstances of the person so demanded, and whether the person ought to be surrendered.”

So if Vance comes knocking, DeSantis has statutory authority to conduct his own investigation, and in his own time. Which, one assumes, will not be a New York minute.

But wait, there’s more! (Of course there’s more, it’s Florida.)

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The statute specifies that the governor shall only authorize extradition upon proof that “the accused was present in the demanding state at the time of the commission of the alleged crime, and that thereafter he or she fled from the state.”

Or …

The Governor of this state may also surrender, on demand of the executive authority of any other state, any person in this state charged in such other state in the manner provided in s. 941.03 with committing an act in this state, or in a third state, intentionally resulting in a crime in the state whose executive authority is making the demand, and the provisions of this chapter not otherwise inconsistent, shall apply to such cases, even though the accused was not in that state at the time of the commission of the crime, and has not fled therefrom.

Clear as mud! All Vance has to do is prove that Trump was in New York when a whole series of complicated financial transactions occurred, and he’s home free.

Politico seems to have wandered off down a blind alley, noting that Joe Abruzzo, clerk of the Circuit Court of Palm Beach County, is “a former close associate” of President Biden’s  younger brother, Frank. But the statute gives municipal officials exactly zero authority over extraditions, instead vesting almost complete discretion in Ron DeSantis, a current close associate of Donald Trump.

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Worse still, Politico seems to endorse the proposition that it would be completely normal for DeSantis to abuse his office to protect Trump, rather than an entirely inappropriate abuse of power.

The former president will soon decamp for his summer home in New Jersey, whose extradition laws are substantially the same as Florida’s, if better drafted. But, notes Politico, “the governor is Democrat PHIL MURPHY, who is no fan of Trump’s, and would not likely intervene to stop Trump’s extradition.” As if intervention by a state executive to protect members of his own party is just part of the job!

In what universe would it be normal for a governor to check party affiliation before authorizing an extradition request? When did serving a warrant pursuant to an indictment become a partisan issue?

Oh, four years ago?

RIGHT.

POLITICO Playbook: How Palm Beach is preparing for a possible Trump indictment [Politico]

Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.

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