This Is the Law That Could Take Down Trump
Bribery statutes apply to public officials. And Trump became one, says one federal prosecutor, when he became the GOP nominee. Dum-da-dum-dum.
MARGARET CARLSON
02.23.18 5:11 AM ET
It’s all well and good for Paul Manafort to spend 15 years in prison for money laundering, and Rick Gates to plead guilty to cut a deal, and Alex Van Der Zwaan to miss the birth of his first child because he lied to the FBI. But it would be an injustice if, once again, those around the president suffer and he is left unscathed. He was the beneficiary of the highly questionable Russian contacts his campaign made and desperately tried to keep secret leading up to the 2016 election, which speaks of collusion and much worse. Trump couldn’t have chosen two top advisers with more contacts with the Kremlin than campaign manager Manafort and national security adviser Michael Flynn. He could hardly have praised Russia President Valdimir Putin more. And he could have hardly benefitted more from Russian interference than to win.
Of course, there’s no law against Trump liking Putin; unseemly yes, illegal, no. But a veteran Washington former federal prosecutor who served during both the Clinton and Bush administrations believes there is a strategy that Mueller is quietly pursuing and that explains his actions so far.
Seth Waxman, now a partner specializing in white-collar crime in Dickinson Wright’s Washington office, has a theory of Mueller’s case, which requires no novel reading of existing law to find Trump broke it. It employs the main weapon any federal prosecutor uses to police public corruption. It is Title 18 United States Code, section 201 that specifically makes it a crime for a public official to take “anything of value,” a bribe, in exchange for government action, which can be prospective.
Note that above I wrote “public official.” That’s because the law is generally wielded against public officials. Problem: Mueller is investigating conduct before Trump became one. Enter Waxman. He points out that in 1962, Congress extended the bribery law to cover activity prior to the assumption of office. It did so, he says, in order to close a “loophole” afforded those “who assume public office under a corrupt commitment.” The upshot? Trump became covered by 18 USC not when he was sworn in but as of July 21, 2016 when he became his party’s nominee in Cleveland, Ohio.
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Aha! Good Luck to the Planet
If he has not already do so, the first tweet would be to demand an investigation into his nominated opponent. That's his style.
I'm betting on money laundering and hopefully conspiracy. However, it's going to be entertaining watching his house of cards collapse around him, and hopefully seeing his Repug CongressCritters flee like roaches when the lights come on.
Before the election Hillary Clinton and the DNC showed the FBI reasons to investigate Trump - mainly it was the Steele dossier that was kept tightly under wraps. Obama was included in that meeting and DoJ, NSA, and others. They were shown the Steele dossier and nothing was done.
Let Cheeto deflect all he wants. The system bent over backwards to protect him and give him every benefit of the doubt.
If the MSM had called out tRump for what he is instead of sensationalizing his every word and those ridiculous rallies, I think our officials would have been far less reluctant to come forward with evidence. Of course, we've all heard talk for years that the FBI tends to have a bias toward Repugs, as do many of our standard MSM outlets (not even speaking of Faux Repug Channel).
I recall that some fairly neutral officials were not sure of the veracity of the Steele document early in that game, so that may have stopped it. To be fair, I also think that President Obama had been pounded by the right so long and so brutally, he feared a backlash in the media if his administration came out with anything negative about tRump. He probably had far too much faith in the good sense of the MSM and the American public to see through tRumps' bullshit.
All of these right-wing and "silent" people will see their paybacks in time - lost services, higher taxes, jobs lost through M&A, etc.
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We don't get to hear any gossip or leaks out of Mueller's office, because there aren't any. So that's OK with me because it means that the Trump "defense team" doesn't know either.
Watergate wasn't pretty but we survived it, and we'll survive this too. Always be vigilant for Repukes' cheating and dirty tricks, because they have to cheat to win. They have to game the system any way they can.
