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December 10, 2018 12:47PM ET
Could Trump Go to Prison Once He’s Out of Office?
Filings made Friday by the special counsel’s office and the Southern District of New York could spell trouble for a civilian Trump
President Donald Trump in Gulfport, Miss., Nov. 26, 2018.
Alex Brandon/AP/Shutterstock
On Friday evening, both Special Counsel Robert Mueller and prosecutors for the Southern District of New York filed memos offering sentence recommendations for Michael Cohen, President Trump’s embattled former attorney who has been a focal point for investigations spanning both offices. The memos were pretty damning for Cohen’s former boss. Mueller wrote that Trump told Cohen to reach out to the Russian government in late 2015, and that he pursued a lucrative real estate deal that would have likely required the cooperation of the Kremlin well into the 2016 campaign. The SDNY wrote that Trump directed Cohen to commit felony campaign finance violations prior to the 2016 election. Trump didn’t seem to think any of this was that big of a deal. “Totally clears the President,” he tweeted shortly after the filings were made. “Thank you!”
On Monday morning, Trump continued to claim he did nothing wrong while also raising the possibility that the president of the United States doesn’t know how to spell “smoking.”
The “simple private transaction” to which the president is referring is a hush money payment of $130,000 given to porn star Stormy Daniels, with whom Trump allegedly had an affair. The payment was made by Cohen through a shell company, and, given that it came in October 2016, was almost certainly made to prevent news of the alleged affair from influencing the election. A separate payment was made in August to acquire the rights to former Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal’s story about her alleged affair with Trump. Prosecutors have argued that because Cohen was involved in campaign matters, the payments — which the SDNY wrote on Friday were made with “the intent to influence the 2016 presidential election” — constituted campaign contributions. “Cohen coordinated his actions with one or more members of the campaign, including through meetings and phone calls, about the fact, nature, and timing of the payments,” the filing read. “In particular, and as Cohen himself has now admitted, with respect to both payments, he acted in coordination with and at the direction of Individual-1.”
“Individual-1” is, of course, Donald Trump, and directing Cohen to make the illegal payments to Daniels and McDougal for the purposes of influencing the election would indeed constitute a felony, regardless of how inconvenient this may be for the president. This goes without mentioning a host of other unknown crimes investigators could be attempting to tie to the president. Contrary to Trump’s tweets Monday morning, these investigators prying into the president’s various pre-election dealings are not “Dems.” As George Conway, the attorney and husband of Trump counsel Kellyanne Conway, pointed out on Twitter, “the criminal campaign-finance violations were found by professional line prosecutors in a Republican-controlled United States Department of Justice.” Conway added that “it looks like a pretty good case.”
The strength of this case has led to renewed calls for Trump’s impeachment. Rep. Jerrold Nadler, the incoming chair of the House Judiciary Committee, said on Sunday that if it is proven that Trump directed Cohen to commit the campaign finance violations in question, it “would be impeachable” and that “even though they were committed before the president became president, they were committed in the service of fraudulently obtaining the office.” Though Democrats will take over the House of Representatives in January, a majority of Senate Republicans would need to sign off on removing the president from office, which isn’t likely to happen minus one hell of a “smocking gun.”
Related
Former Astronaut Mark Kelly Enters the 2020 Senate Race
Trump and Beto Speak to Two Americas on the Same Night, in the Same City
But what happens if Trump is voted out of office in 2020?
The Justice Department has a longstanding policy that a sitting president cannot be indicted, meaning Trump is more or less safe, for now. The filings released Friday have made real the possibility that Trump could be in serious trouble as soon as he leaves office. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) raised the issue Sunday on Face The Nation. “My takeaway is that there is a very real prospect that on the day Donald Trump leaves office the Justice Department may indict him,” he said. “He may be the first president in quite some time to face the real prospect of jail time. We have been discussing the issue of pardons the president may offer to people or dangle in front of people. The real pardon question may come down the road as the next president may have to determine whether to pardon Donald Trump.”
Schiff, whom Trump referred to as “Adam Schitt” on Twitter last month, is the incoming chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and has already announced that congressional Democrats plan to investigate the Trump administration in regard to a number of issues.
Former FBI Director James Comey, who on Friday testified before the House Judiciary Committee regarding the FBI’s handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email server, suggested what Schiff said outright during an event at New York’s 92nd Street Y. When asked what would happen to someone who did what the SDNY alleged Trump did if they weren’t president, Comey said that “that person would be in serious jeopardy” of being indicted. “The government wouldn’t make that sponsoring allegation if they weren’t seriously contemplating going forward with criminal charges,” Comey explained.
As the New York Times pointed out last week, the statute of limitations for Trump’s alleged crime (or crimes) is likely to run out in 2022, which means he’ll probably be in the clear if he leaves office in 2025 rather than 2021. When voters go to the polls in two years, then, they may not only be voting to remove Trump from the White House, but to put him into prison.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12...ect-of-impeachment-or-jail-for-trump/10603368
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Donald Trump could face the prospect of impeachment or jail time, leading Democrats say
Updated 11 Dec 2018, 5:15am
Photo: Mr Trump has denied wrongdoing and has compared the investigations to a "witch hunt". (AP: Evan Vucci)
Related Story: What could happen now that prosecutors have tied Trump to a federal crime?
Related Story: FBI investigated four Americans on Russia collusion suspicions, Comey says
Related Story: 'Dumb as a rock' former secretary of state says Trump 'doesn't like to read'
Leading Democrats have said impeachment or prison time are real possibilities for Donald Trump if it is proved that he directed illegal hush money payments to women, adding to the legal pressure on the US President over the Russia investigation and other scandals.
Key points:
"There's a very real prospect that on the day Donald Trump leaves office, the Justice Department may indict him, that he may be the first president in quite some time to face the real prospect of jail time," said Adam Schiff, the incoming chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
"The bigger pardon question may come down the road as the next president has to determine whether to pardon Donald Trump."
Jerry Nadler, the incoming chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, described the details in prosecutors' filings that were released on Friday (local time) in the case of Mr Trump's former personal lawyer Michael Cohen as evidence that Mr Trump was "at the centre of a massive fraud".
He may have stayed under the radar this week, but the US President was reportedly miffed by ceremonial events unrelated to him, writes Zoe Daniel.
In the filings, prosecutors in New York for the first time linked Mr Trump to a federal crime of illegal payments to buy the silence of two women during the 2016 campaign.
Special counsel Robert Mueller's office also laid out previously undisclosed contacts between Trump associates and Russian intermediaries, and suggested the Kremlin aimed early on to influence Mr Trump and his Republican campaign by playing to both his political and personal business interests.
Mr Trump has denied wrongdoing and has compared the investigations to a "witch hunt".
Mr Nadler said it was too early to say whether Congress would pursue impeachment proceedings based on the illegal payments alone because politicians would need to weigh the gravity of the offence to justify "overturning" the 2016 election.
He and other politicians said they would await additional details from Mr Mueller's investigation into Russian election interference, including possible coordination with the Trump campaign, to determine the extent of Mr Trump's misconduct.
Photo: Mr Nadler, who's expected to chair the panel in January, says it remains to be seen whether Mr Trump's payments alone would justify Congress launching impeachment proceedings. (AP: Carolyn Kaster)
But Mr Nadler said whether or not they pursue impeachment, the illegal payments nevertheless constituted impeachable offences.
What can we expect from the Mueller investigation?
And could Donald Trump be impeached? Reporter Christina Zhou explains.
Mr Trump said he would nominate former attorney-general William Barr to the post to succeed Jeff Sessions.
Mr Nadler indicated that Democrats, who will control the House in January, will step up their own investigations.
"The new Congress will not try to shield the President," he said.
In the legal filings, the Justice Department stopped short of accusing Mr Trump of directly committing a crime.
But it said Mr Trump told Mr Cohen to make illegal payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal, both of whom claimed to have had affairs with Mr Trump more than a decade ago.
In separate filings, Mr Mueller's team detailed how Mr Cohen spoke to a Russian who "claimed to be a 'trusted person' in the Russian Federation who could offer the campaign 'political synergy' and 'synergy on a government level'".
Mr Cohen said he never followed up on that meeting. Mr Mueller's team also said former campaign chairman Paul Manafort lied to them about his contacts with a Russian associate and Trump administration officials, including in 2018.
Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume.
Video: Mr Cohen and his lawyer are confronted by journalists. (ABC News)
Republican senator Marco Rubio of Florida called the latest filings "relevant" in judging Mr Trump's fitness for office, but said politicians need more information to render judgment.
He also warned the White House about considering a pardon for Mr Manafort, saying such a step could trigger congressional debate about limiting a president's pardon powers.
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/12/mueller-sentencing-memos-michael-cohen-trump-2020-prison.html
Trump 2020 Shaping Up to Be a Campaign to Stay Out of Prison
By Eric Levitz
@EricLevitz
“Don’t lock me up! Don’t lock me up!” Photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images
In 2016, Donald Trump claimed that America’s presidential election would determine nothing less than whether a proven criminal would be sent to jail — or the Oval Office. In 2020, that might actually be the case.
On Friday, federal prosecutors released a sentencing recommendation for Trump’s longtime lawyer Michael Cohen — and, in so doing, implicated the president in a federal crime, and suggested that he might well be implicated in several more.
In August, Cohen pleaded guilty to multiple campaign-finance violations, saying that he had been involved in an illicit scheme to aid Donald Trump’s presidential campaign by providing hush payments to two of the GOP nominee’s alleged ex-lovers in fall 2016 (such hush payments would have constituted undisclosed, illegally large “in-kind” contributions to the Trump campaign). Cohen also claimed that Trump had been the mastermind behind said illicit scheme.
In the sentencing memo Friday, prosecutors formally endorsed Cohen’s story, writing, “Cohen himself has now admitted, with respect to both payments, he acted in coordination with and at the direction of Individual-1” — a.k.a. the president.
Thus, it’s quite plausible that the only reason Donald Trump has not been indicted on federal charges is because he is the president. The conventional wisdom among legal scholars holds that the commander-in-chief cannot be indicted so long as he or she remains in office. That means that if Trump loses in 2020, he could promptly find himself in legal jeopardy. If he wins, he could forever escape all legal liability for his part in Cohen’s crimes — the statute of limitations on a campaign-finance violation committed in 2016 would likely expire in 2022.
Granted, even if Trump were a private citizen, convicting him of violating campaign-finance law would be difficult, as prosecutors would have to prove that the mogul intended the hush-money payments to benefit him politically (as opposed to just maritally). But there is some reason to think that prosecutors have evidence that speaks to Trump’s intent. And it appears more likely than not that prosecutors will implicate “Individual-1” in additional crimes. As Barry Berke, Noah Bookbinder, and Norman Eisen explain in the New York Times:
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And this says nothing of the new evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian government that’s sprinkled throughout Mueller’s memo. These lines of inquiry may not bear prosecutable fruit, but Cohen’s conviction alone should be sufficient for putting the fear of a post-presidential indictment into Trump.
It is true that the president could still be impeached instead of indicted. But even if Mueller’s investigation ultimately links the president to more crimes — and demonstrates that his 2016 campaign had illicit ties to Russia — it is hard to imagine a critical mass of Republican senators voting to remove Trump from office. There aren’t many things that this president has done with diligence and discipline, but delegitimizing the Mueller probe in the eyes of his base is one. And given how many blatant abuses of power that base has already witnessed — and how unwavering the Trumpian proletariat’s support for their dear leader has been through it all — it’s hard to see the president’s approval rating dropping to Nixonian levels, no matter what Mueller’s “WITCH HUNT” yields.
All of which is to say: There is a significant chance that in 2020, Donald Trump will be running for a second-term — and from the law — simultaneously. And if that proves to be the case, the consequences for American political life could be dire.
For Trump, the costs of losing the 2016 election were largely superficial — by most accounts, the original aim of the reality television star’s campaign was publicity, not the presidency. And yet, the mere threat of narcissistic injury was enough to inspire Trump to sow distrust in the legitimacy of the election. In July 2016, the GOP nominee told a crowd in Pennsylvania that “the only way we can lose, in my opinion … is if cheating goes on.” One month later, he told supporters in North Carolina that if the state’s voter-ID law remained suspended, Clinton voters would go to the polls “15 times” each. Shortly thereafter, Trump’s first general-election ad hit the airwaves — this was its opening image:
Trump never stopped disputing the integrity of the election, even after he had won. Instead, the president-elect claimed, repeatedly, that millions of illegal ballots had robbed him of his rightful popular vote victory.
In this year’s elections, Trump had far less at stake. He wasn’t on the ballot himself, and a Democratic takeover of the House was already close to a foregone conclusion by midsummer. And yet, to boost his party’s 2018 prospects, the president proved willing to fabricate an impending “invasion” by migrant terrorists and gangsters; suggest that said invasion was being organized by the Democratic Party as part of an elaborate bid to steal the midterm elections; persist in fomenting such incendiary conspiracy theories even after they inspired one of his supporters to attempt the assassination of many leading Democrats; and deploy thousands of U.S. troops to the southern border, so as to give his big lie an extra measure of credibility.
Even before Mueller’s latest revelations, this behavior was sufficient to prompt widespread anxiety about what Trump would be willing to do to win reelection, and/or what he might incite “Second Amendment people” to do should he lose it. If the president’s personal freedom ends up on the ballot in 2020, a lot of worse-case-scenarios become more plausible.
Some progressives have worried that Trump might actually be able to turn the threat of a post-election indictment into a source of electoral strength. The idea being: If the sitting president can (somewhat credibly) campaign against a deep-state plot to “lock him up,” then the Democratic nominee will struggle to focus attention on Trump’s policy failures and substantive betrayals of working people, where he is arguably most vulnerable. But that particular fear seems unfounded. Trump’s myriad scandals haven’t alienated the GOP base, but they appear to have damaged him with just about everyone else. And anyhow, there are plenty of ways to insert policy arguments into a campaign dominated by an incumbent’s corruption scandals (simply pointing out the president appears too consumed by his own problems to worry about yours could suffice).
Should the Mueller probe continue to implicate the president in unsavory and illegal activities, the Democratic Party’s 2020 prospects will improve; but America’s prospects of averting a democratic crisis and/or heightened levels of political violence won’t.
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Home Politics Politics News
December 10, 2018 12:47PM ET
Could Trump Go to Prison Once He’s Out of Office?
Filings made Friday by the special counsel’s office and the Southern District of New York could spell trouble for a civilian Trump
President Donald Trump in Gulfport, Miss., Nov. 26, 2018.
Alex Brandon/AP/Shutterstock
On Friday evening, both Special Counsel Robert Mueller and prosecutors for the Southern District of New York filed memos offering sentence recommendations for Michael Cohen, President Trump’s embattled former attorney who has been a focal point for investigations spanning both offices. The memos were pretty damning for Cohen’s former boss. Mueller wrote that Trump told Cohen to reach out to the Russian government in late 2015, and that he pursued a lucrative real estate deal that would have likely required the cooperation of the Kremlin well into the 2016 campaign. The SDNY wrote that Trump directed Cohen to commit felony campaign finance violations prior to the 2016 election. Trump didn’t seem to think any of this was that big of a deal. “Totally clears the President,” he tweeted shortly after the filings were made. “Thank you!”
On Monday morning, Trump continued to claim he did nothing wrong while also raising the possibility that the president of the United States doesn’t know how to spell “smoking.”
The “simple private transaction” to which the president is referring is a hush money payment of $130,000 given to porn star Stormy Daniels, with whom Trump allegedly had an affair. The payment was made by Cohen through a shell company, and, given that it came in October 2016, was almost certainly made to prevent news of the alleged affair from influencing the election. A separate payment was made in August to acquire the rights to former Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal’s story about her alleged affair with Trump. Prosecutors have argued that because Cohen was involved in campaign matters, the payments — which the SDNY wrote on Friday were made with “the intent to influence the 2016 presidential election” — constituted campaign contributions. “Cohen coordinated his actions with one or more members of the campaign, including through meetings and phone calls, about the fact, nature, and timing of the payments,” the filing read. “In particular, and as Cohen himself has now admitted, with respect to both payments, he acted in coordination with and at the direction of Individual-1.”
“Individual-1” is, of course, Donald Trump, and directing Cohen to make the illegal payments to Daniels and McDougal for the purposes of influencing the election would indeed constitute a felony, regardless of how inconvenient this may be for the president. This goes without mentioning a host of other unknown crimes investigators could be attempting to tie to the president. Contrary to Trump’s tweets Monday morning, these investigators prying into the president’s various pre-election dealings are not “Dems.” As George Conway, the attorney and husband of Trump counsel Kellyanne Conway, pointed out on Twitter, “the criminal campaign-finance violations were found by professional line prosecutors in a Republican-controlled United States Department of Justice.” Conway added that “it looks like a pretty good case.”
The strength of this case has led to renewed calls for Trump’s impeachment. Rep. Jerrold Nadler, the incoming chair of the House Judiciary Committee, said on Sunday that if it is proven that Trump directed Cohen to commit the campaign finance violations in question, it “would be impeachable” and that “even though they were committed before the president became president, they were committed in the service of fraudulently obtaining the office.” Though Democrats will take over the House of Representatives in January, a majority of Senate Republicans would need to sign off on removing the president from office, which isn’t likely to happen minus one hell of a “smocking gun.”
Related
Former Astronaut Mark Kelly Enters the 2020 Senate Race
Trump and Beto Speak to Two Americas on the Same Night, in the Same City
But what happens if Trump is voted out of office in 2020?
The Justice Department has a longstanding policy that a sitting president cannot be indicted, meaning Trump is more or less safe, for now. The filings released Friday have made real the possibility that Trump could be in serious trouble as soon as he leaves office. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) raised the issue Sunday on Face The Nation. “My takeaway is that there is a very real prospect that on the day Donald Trump leaves office the Justice Department may indict him,” he said. “He may be the first president in quite some time to face the real prospect of jail time. We have been discussing the issue of pardons the president may offer to people or dangle in front of people. The real pardon question may come down the road as the next president may have to determine whether to pardon Donald Trump.”
Schiff, whom Trump referred to as “Adam Schitt” on Twitter last month, is the incoming chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and has already announced that congressional Democrats plan to investigate the Trump administration in regard to a number of issues.
Former FBI Director James Comey, who on Friday testified before the House Judiciary Committee regarding the FBI’s handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email server, suggested what Schiff said outright during an event at New York’s 92nd Street Y. When asked what would happen to someone who did what the SDNY alleged Trump did if they weren’t president, Comey said that “that person would be in serious jeopardy” of being indicted. “The government wouldn’t make that sponsoring allegation if they weren’t seriously contemplating going forward with criminal charges,” Comey explained.
Jim Comey on MSNBC at the 92nd Street Y said that Trump would be "in serious jeopardy of being charged” if he wasn’t president. pic.twitter.com/mWZvAupPDV
— andrew kaczynski (@KFILE) December 10, 2018
— andrew kaczynski (@KFILE) December 10, 2018
As the New York Times pointed out last week, the statute of limitations for Trump’s alleged crime (or crimes) is likely to run out in 2022, which means he’ll probably be in the clear if he leaves office in 2025 rather than 2021. When voters go to the polls in two years, then, they may not only be voting to remove Trump from the White House, but to put him into prison.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12...ect-of-impeachment-or-jail-for-trump/10603368
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Donald Trump could face the prospect of impeachment or jail time, leading Democrats say
Updated 11 Dec 2018, 5:15am
Photo: Mr Trump has denied wrongdoing and has compared the investigations to a "witch hunt". (AP: Evan Vucci) Related Story: What could happen now that prosecutors have tied Trump to a federal crime?
Related Story: FBI investigated four Americans on Russia collusion suspicions, Comey says
Related Story: 'Dumb as a rock' former secretary of state says Trump 'doesn't like to read'
Leading Democrats have said impeachment or prison time are real possibilities for Donald Trump if it is proved that he directed illegal hush money payments to women, adding to the legal pressure on the US President over the Russia investigation and other scandals.
Key points:
- On Friday, prosecutors for the first time linked Mr Trump to a federal crime
- Mr Nadler said this evidence showed Mr Trump was "at the centre of a massive fraud"
- He indicated Democrats will step up their own investigations
"There's a very real prospect that on the day Donald Trump leaves office, the Justice Department may indict him, that he may be the first president in quite some time to face the real prospect of jail time," said Adam Schiff, the incoming chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
"The bigger pardon question may come down the road as the next president has to determine whether to pardon Donald Trump."
Jerry Nadler, the incoming chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, described the details in prosecutors' filings that were released on Friday (local time) in the case of Mr Trump's former personal lawyer Michael Cohen as evidence that Mr Trump was "at the centre of a massive fraud".
"They would be impeachable offences," he said.
Trump's fury 'bubbling behind the scenes'
He may have stayed under the radar this week, but the US President was reportedly miffed by ceremonial events unrelated to him, writes Zoe Daniel.
In the filings, prosecutors in New York for the first time linked Mr Trump to a federal crime of illegal payments to buy the silence of two women during the 2016 campaign.
Special counsel Robert Mueller's office also laid out previously undisclosed contacts between Trump associates and Russian intermediaries, and suggested the Kremlin aimed early on to influence Mr Trump and his Republican campaign by playing to both his political and personal business interests.
Mr Trump has denied wrongdoing and has compared the investigations to a "witch hunt".
Mr Nadler said it was too early to say whether Congress would pursue impeachment proceedings based on the illegal payments alone because politicians would need to weigh the gravity of the offence to justify "overturning" the 2016 election.
He and other politicians said they would await additional details from Mr Mueller's investigation into Russian election interference, including possible coordination with the Trump campaign, to determine the extent of Mr Trump's misconduct.
Photo: Mr Nadler, who's expected to chair the panel in January, says it remains to be seen whether Mr Trump's payments alone would justify Congress launching impeachment proceedings. (AP: Carolyn Kaster) But Mr Nadler said whether or not they pursue impeachment, the illegal payments nevertheless constituted impeachable offences.
"Even though they were committed before the President became President, they were committed in the service of fraudulently obtaining the office," he said.
Mr Mueller has not said when he will complete a report of any findings, and it isn't clear that any such report would be made available to Congress. That would be up to the Attorney-General.What can we expect from the Mueller investigation?
And could Donald Trump be impeached? Reporter Christina Zhou explains.
Mr Trump said he would nominate former attorney-general William Barr to the post to succeed Jeff Sessions.
Mr Nadler indicated that Democrats, who will control the House in January, will step up their own investigations.
"The new Congress will not try to shield the President," he said.
"We will try to get to the bottom of this, in order to serve the American people and to stop this massive conspiracy — this massive fraud on the American people."
Trump hasn't been directly accused of a crimeIn the legal filings, the Justice Department stopped short of accusing Mr Trump of directly committing a crime.
But it said Mr Trump told Mr Cohen to make illegal payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal, both of whom claimed to have had affairs with Mr Trump more than a decade ago.
In separate filings, Mr Mueller's team detailed how Mr Cohen spoke to a Russian who "claimed to be a 'trusted person' in the Russian Federation who could offer the campaign 'political synergy' and 'synergy on a government level'".
Mr Cohen said he never followed up on that meeting. Mr Mueller's team also said former campaign chairman Paul Manafort lied to them about his contacts with a Russian associate and Trump administration officials, including in 2018.
Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume.
Video: Mr Cohen and his lawyer are confronted by journalists. (ABC News)
Republican senator Marco Rubio of Florida called the latest filings "relevant" in judging Mr Trump's fitness for office, but said politicians need more information to render judgment.
He also warned the White House about considering a pardon for Mr Manafort, saying such a step could trigger congressional debate about limiting a president's pardon powers.
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/12/mueller-sentencing-memos-michael-cohen-trump-2020-prison.html
Trump 2020 Shaping Up to Be a Campaign to Stay Out of Prison
By Eric Levitz
@EricLevitz
“Don’t lock me up! Don’t lock me up!” Photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images
In 2016, Donald Trump claimed that America’s presidential election would determine nothing less than whether a proven criminal would be sent to jail — or the Oval Office. In 2020, that might actually be the case.
On Friday, federal prosecutors released a sentencing recommendation for Trump’s longtime lawyer Michael Cohen — and, in so doing, implicated the president in a federal crime, and suggested that he might well be implicated in several more.
In August, Cohen pleaded guilty to multiple campaign-finance violations, saying that he had been involved in an illicit scheme to aid Donald Trump’s presidential campaign by providing hush payments to two of the GOP nominee’s alleged ex-lovers in fall 2016 (such hush payments would have constituted undisclosed, illegally large “in-kind” contributions to the Trump campaign). Cohen also claimed that Trump had been the mastermind behind said illicit scheme.
In the sentencing memo Friday, prosecutors formally endorsed Cohen’s story, writing, “Cohen himself has now admitted, with respect to both payments, he acted in coordination with and at the direction of Individual-1” — a.k.a. the president.
Thus, it’s quite plausible that the only reason Donald Trump has not been indicted on federal charges is because he is the president. The conventional wisdom among legal scholars holds that the commander-in-chief cannot be indicted so long as he or she remains in office. That means that if Trump loses in 2020, he could promptly find himself in legal jeopardy. If he wins, he could forever escape all legal liability for his part in Cohen’s crimes — the statute of limitations on a campaign-finance violation committed in 2016 would likely expire in 2022.
Granted, even if Trump were a private citizen, convicting him of violating campaign-finance law would be difficult, as prosecutors would have to prove that the mogul intended the hush-money payments to benefit him politically (as opposed to just maritally). But there is some reason to think that prosecutors have evidence that speaks to Trump’s intent. And it appears more likely than not that prosecutors will implicate “Individual-1” in additional crimes. As Barry Berke, Noah Bookbinder, and Norman Eisen explain in the New York Times:
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The special counsel focuses [in his sentencing memo] on Mr. Cohen’s contacts with people connected to the White House in 2017 and 2018, possibly further implicating the president and others in his orbit in conspiracy to obstruct justice or to suborn perjury. Mr. Mueller specifically mentions that Mr. Cohen provided invaluable insight into the “preparing and circulating” of his testimony to Congress — and if others, including the president, knew about the false testimony or encouraged it in any way, they would be at substantial legal risk.
Mr. Trump’s legal woes do not end there. The special counsel also advanced the president’s potential exposure under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act for activities relating to a potential Trump Tower Moscow. Mr. Mueller noted that the Moscow project was a lucrative business opportunity that actively sought Russian government approval, and that the unnamed Russian told Mr. Cohen that there was “no bigger warranty in any project than the consent” of Mr. Putin.
Mr. Trump’s legal woes do not end there. The special counsel also advanced the president’s potential exposure under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act for activities relating to a potential Trump Tower Moscow. Mr. Mueller noted that the Moscow project was a lucrative business opportunity that actively sought Russian government approval, and that the unnamed Russian told Mr. Cohen that there was “no bigger warranty in any project than the consent” of Mr. Putin.
And this says nothing of the new evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian government that’s sprinkled throughout Mueller’s memo. These lines of inquiry may not bear prosecutable fruit, but Cohen’s conviction alone should be sufficient for putting the fear of a post-presidential indictment into Trump.
It is true that the president could still be impeached instead of indicted. But even if Mueller’s investigation ultimately links the president to more crimes — and demonstrates that his 2016 campaign had illicit ties to Russia — it is hard to imagine a critical mass of Republican senators voting to remove Trump from office. There aren’t many things that this president has done with diligence and discipline, but delegitimizing the Mueller probe in the eyes of his base is one. And given how many blatant abuses of power that base has already witnessed — and how unwavering the Trumpian proletariat’s support for their dear leader has been through it all — it’s hard to see the president’s approval rating dropping to Nixonian levels, no matter what Mueller’s “WITCH HUNT” yields.
All of which is to say: There is a significant chance that in 2020, Donald Trump will be running for a second-term — and from the law — simultaneously. And if that proves to be the case, the consequences for American political life could be dire.
For Trump, the costs of losing the 2016 election were largely superficial — by most accounts, the original aim of the reality television star’s campaign was publicity, not the presidency. And yet, the mere threat of narcissistic injury was enough to inspire Trump to sow distrust in the legitimacy of the election. In July 2016, the GOP nominee told a crowd in Pennsylvania that “the only way we can lose, in my opinion … is if cheating goes on.” One month later, he told supporters in North Carolina that if the state’s voter-ID law remained suspended, Clinton voters would go to the polls “15 times” each. Shortly thereafter, Trump’s first general-election ad hit the airwaves — this was its opening image:
Trump never stopped disputing the integrity of the election, even after he had won. Instead, the president-elect claimed, repeatedly, that millions of illegal ballots had robbed him of his rightful popular vote victory.
In this year’s elections, Trump had far less at stake. He wasn’t on the ballot himself, and a Democratic takeover of the House was already close to a foregone conclusion by midsummer. And yet, to boost his party’s 2018 prospects, the president proved willing to fabricate an impending “invasion” by migrant terrorists and gangsters; suggest that said invasion was being organized by the Democratic Party as part of an elaborate bid to steal the midterm elections; persist in fomenting such incendiary conspiracy theories even after they inspired one of his supporters to attempt the assassination of many leading Democrats; and deploy thousands of U.S. troops to the southern border, so as to give his big lie an extra measure of credibility.
Even before Mueller’s latest revelations, this behavior was sufficient to prompt widespread anxiety about what Trump would be willing to do to win reelection, and/or what he might incite “Second Amendment people” to do should he lose it. If the president’s personal freedom ends up on the ballot in 2020, a lot of worse-case-scenarios become more plausible.
Some progressives have worried that Trump might actually be able to turn the threat of a post-election indictment into a source of electoral strength. The idea being: If the sitting president can (somewhat credibly) campaign against a deep-state plot to “lock him up,” then the Democratic nominee will struggle to focus attention on Trump’s policy failures and substantive betrayals of working people, where he is arguably most vulnerable. But that particular fear seems unfounded. Trump’s myriad scandals haven’t alienated the GOP base, but they appear to have damaged him with just about everyone else. And anyhow, there are plenty of ways to insert policy arguments into a campaign dominated by an incumbent’s corruption scandals (simply pointing out the president appears too consumed by his own problems to worry about yours could suffice).
Should the Mueller probe continue to implicate the president in unsavory and illegal activities, the Democratic Party’s 2020 prospects will improve; but America’s prospects of averting a democratic crisis and/or heightened levels of political violence won’t.
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