This could be very interesting.
WASHINGTON — The latest revelations by prosecutors investigating President Trump and his team draw a portrait of a candidate who personally directed an illegal scheme to manipulate the 2016 election and whose advisers had more contact with Russia than Mr. Trump has ever acknowledged.
In the narrative that the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, and New York prosecutors are building, Mr. Trump continued to secretly seek to do business in Russia deep into his presidential campaign even as Russian agents made more efforts to influence him. At the same time, in this account he ordered hush payments to two women to suppress stories of impropriety in violation of campaign finance law.
The prosecutors made clear in a sentencing memo filed on Friday that they viewed efforts by Mr. Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, to squelch the stories as nothing less than a perversion of a democratic election — and by extension they effectively accused the president of defrauding voters, questioning the legitimacy of his victory.
On Saturday, Mr. Trump dismissed the filings, and his lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, minimized the importance of any potential campaign finance violations. Democrats, however, said they could lead to impeachment.
In the memo in the case of Mr. Cohen, prosecutors from the Southern District of New York depicted Mr. Trump, identified only as “Individual-1,” as an accomplice in the hush payments. While Mr. Trump was not charged, the reference echoed Watergate, when President Richard M. Nixon was named an unindicted co-conspirator by a grand jury investigating the cover-up of the break-in at the Democratic headquarters.
“While many Americans who desired a particular outcome to the election knocked on doors, toiled at phone banks or found any number of other legal ways to make their voices heard, Cohen sought to influence the election from the shadows,” the prosecutors wrote.
“He did so by orchestrating secret and illegal payments to silence two women who otherwise would have made public their alleged extramarital affairs with Individual-1,” they continued. “In the process, Cohen deceived the voting public by hiding alleged facts that he believed would have had a substantial effect on the election.”
If this does go down or happen; you know that the democrats will go for impeachment. There is more…
video:
Here is Andrew McCarthy’s take in what is discussed above in the video:
Via Fox News:
The major takeaway from the 40-page sentencing memorandum filed by federal prosecutors Friday for Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former personal attorney, is this: The president is very likely to be indicted on a charge of violating federal campaign finance laws.
It has been obvious for some time that President Trump is the principal subject of the investigation still being conducted by the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.
Cohen earlier pleaded guilty to multiple counts of business and tax fraud, violating campaign finance law, and making false statements to Congress regarding unsuccessful efforts to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.
Yes, Cohen has stated he did the hands-on work in orchestrating hush-money payments to two women who claim to have had sexual liaisons with Trump many years ago (liaisons Trump denies).
But when Cohen pleaded guilty in August, prosecutors induced him to make an extraordinary statement in open court: the payments to the women were made “in coordination with and at the direction of” the candidate for federal office – Donald Trump.
Prosecutors would not have done this if the president was not on their radar screen. Indeed, if the president was not implicated, I suspect they would not have prosecuted Cohen for campaign finance violations at all. Those charges had a negligible impact on the jail time Cohen faces, which is driven by the more serious offenses of tax and financial institution fraud, involving millions of dollars.
Moreover, campaign finance infractions are often settled by payment of an administrative fine, not turned into felony prosecutions. To be sure, federal prosecutors in New York City have charged them as felonies before – most notably in 2014 against Dinesh D’Souza, whom Trump later pardoned.
McCarthy also points out:
In marked contrast, though, when it was discovered that Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign was guilty of violations involving nearly $2 million – an amount that dwarfs the $280,000 in Cohen’s case – the Obama Justice Department decided not to prosecute. Instead, the matter was quietly disposed of by a $375,000 fine by the Federal Election Commission.
Now, this is where it gets very interesting, there are some who say that Trump cannot be indicted as President. See here:
Via the AP:
WASHINGTON (AP) — For the first time, prosecutors have tied President Donald Trump to a federal crime, accusing him of directing illegal hush-money payments to women during his presidential campaign in 2016.
The Justice Department stopped short of accusing Trump of directly committing a crime. Instead, they said in a court filing Friday night that Trump told his former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, to make illegal payments to buy the silence of two women — porn actress Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal — who claimed to have had affairs with Trump and threatened his White House bid. Trump has denied having an affair.
Cohen has pleaded guilty to several charges, including campaign finance violations, and is awaiting sentencing.
Although Trump hasn’t been charged with any crimes, the question of whether a president can even be prosecuted while in office is a matter of legal dispute.
The AP also answers some very good questions:
CAN A SITTING PRESIDENT BE INDICTED?
Legal experts are divided on that question. The Supreme Court has never ruled on whether the president can be indicted or whether the president can be subpoenaed for testimony.
The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which provides legal advice and guidance to executive branch agencies, has maintained that a sitting president cannot be indicted. Two Justice Department reports, one in 1973 and one in 2000, came to the same conclusion.
Those reports essentially concluded that the president’s responsibilities are so important that an indictment would pose too many risks for the government to function properly.
Trump’s lawyers have said that special counsel Robert Mueller plans to adhere to that guidance, though Mueller’s office has never independently confirmed that. Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, has also said that a president cannot be indicted.
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COULD TRUMP BE INDICTED ONCE HE LEAVES OFFICE?
There would presumably be no bar against charging a president after he leaves the White House.
Legal scholars have said that based on the Justice Department’s guidance, it would appear that Trump could be charged for wrongdoing during the campaign or as president once he leaves office, but likely not before that.
Blackman said the statute of limitations for a campaign finance law violation — like the one Cohen pleaded guilty to — would be five years. The payments to Daniels and McDougal were made in 2016, meaning the statute of limitations would run out in 2021.
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COULD TRUMP PARDON HIMSELF?
Trump has already shown he’s not afraid to use his pardon power, particularly for those he has viewed as unfair victims of partisanship. He’s pardoned Joe Arpaio, the former Arizona sheriff who was convicted of criminal contempt for disobeying a judge’s order, and I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, a Bush administration official convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice in a leak case.
Courts have never had to answer the question of whether the president can pardon himself. In June, Giuliani told NBC’s “Meet the Pres” that while Trump “probably does” have the power, “pardoning himself would be unthinkable and probably lead to immediate impeachment.”
Now, personally, at this point, I believe that President Donald Trump should resign from office. He has tainted the American people’s trust and has tainted the office of the President of the United States and should leave office. This is coming from someone who voted for this man and believed that he could do things much better than Hillary. Needless to say, I am very disappointed that I believed this man and voted for him.
Others: JustOneMinute, ThinkProgress, Raw Story, Breitbart, Joe.My.God., Mediaite and Power Line, Axios, Bangor Daily News, Hullabaloo and Breitbart,Law & Crime and Power Line