WaPo: Despite Talk Of Trump Impeachment After Cohen Betrayal, Charges Unlikely
by Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge.com
Wed, 08/22/2018
The Washington Post writes on Wednesday that former Trump attorney Michael Cohen’s claim that he broke campaign finance laws at the direction of then-candidate Trump may spark calls to impeach, however even if true it “probably will not have any legal consequences for the president while he is in office,” according to legal analysts.
The 51-year-old Cohen, Trump’s lawyer for a decade, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to campaign finance violations and other charges, including bank fraud totaling “well over $20 million.” The alleged campaign finance violations in connection with paying hush money to two women claiming to have had affairs with Trump, however, are at the heart of what many think could be the start of impeachment talks (since that whole Russia thing hasn’t panned out so far). But even if campaign finance laws were broken, WaPo says it may not matter:
Such an explosive assertion against anyone but the president would suggest that a criminal case could be in the offing, but under long-standing legal interpretations by the Justice Department, the president cannot be charged with a crime.
The department produced legal analyses in 1973 and 2000 concluding that the Constitution does not allow for the criminal indictment of a sitting president. -WaPo
Supporting this notion, special counsel Robert Mueller admitted in May that he will follow DOJ guidance and not indict President Trump as part of the Russia investigation.
“All they get to do is write a report,” said Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani.
Giuliani, himself a former federal prosecutor and mayor of New York City, also told Fox that Mueller’s investigators have not responded to five information requests from the president’s team. That has forced Trump’s legal team to push off making a decision about whether the president will sit for an interview with the special counsel — a decision they had hoped to reach by Thursday. -Fox News
The Rest…HERE
