Trump could face federal conspiracy charge, says law prof
It will be 'very difficult for Trump to escape criminal liability,' says Jens David Ohlin
Implications made by Donald Trump's former lawyer put the U.S. president in "really serious legal jeopardy," according to a professor of law.
"Trump's criminal exposure here is not just for campaign finance violations but also for a federal conspiracy charge, because he was clearly working with Cohen to effectuate this campaign finance violation," Jens David Ohlin told The Current's guest host Ioanna Roumeliotis.
"That's a very serious criminal liability," said Ohlin, vice-dean and a professor of law at Cornell University in New York.
If anyone is looking for a good lawyer, I would strongly suggest that you don’t retain the services of Michael Cohen!
—@realDonaldTrumpCohen, a longtime personal lawyer to Trump, pleaded guilty Tuesday to tax evasion, bank fraud and campaign finance violations. He implicated Trump by saying he had acted "in co-ordination and at the direction of a candidate for federal office." The action in question was the payment of hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels and a former Playboy model, who both claim to have had affairs with Trump before the 2016 election campaign.
At almost the same time in New York, Trump's former campaign manager Paul Manafort was found guilty on eight counts, including bank fraud and filing false tax returns.
Manafort's trial was the first related to special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, but is not directly related to its primary focus of Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
I feel very badly for Paul Manafort and his wonderful family. “Justice” took a 12 year old tax case, among other things, applied tremendous pressure on him and, unlike Michael Cohen, he refused to “break” - make up stories in order to get a “deal.” Such respect for a brave man!
—@realDonaldTrumpMica Mosbacher, an adviser to the Trump 2020 campaign, called the investigation "a witch hunt."
"We've gone on for months and months and months, they have yet to prove collusion with the Trump campaign," she said.
Ohlin disagreed, arguing that "it's clear there's criminality here, these aren't just allegations, they've now been accepted by the legal system."
The Justice Department's policy is that a sitting president cannot be indicted, Ohlin said.
"The smart money is on the idea that Mueller … would feel constrained by those regulations and so he won't try and indict the president," he told Roumeliotis.
"But as soon as the president is removed from office through impeachment, as soon as the president is voted out of office in 2020, if that's the result of the next presidential election, he could be indicted at that point."
Listen to the full conversation near the top of this page.
Produced by The Current's Julie Crysler and Samira Mohyeddin.