Dems ask whether DOJ memo prevented prosecuting Trump for hush payments
House Democrats want to know if a decades-old Justice Department prohibition on indicting a sitting president played a role in federal prosecutors' decision not to criminally charge President Donald Trump over hush money payments that he directed his fixer to pay to women.
The prohibition, laid out in a 2000 memo by the Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel, was also a key factor of former special counsel Robert Mueller's decision to refrain from considering whether to charge Trump with obstruction of justice for his repeated attempts to thwart the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Now Democrats on the House Oversight Committee say the federal prosecutors based in the Southern District of New York should disclose whether they made a similar analysis. The president’s longtime lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen was jailed earlier this year, in part for his role in hush payments to women accusing Trump of extramarital affairs, and he implicated the president in the scheme. Documents made public Thursday showed contacts between Cohen and Trump surrounding the hush money payments and were part of prosecutors' evidence that Trump directed Cohen to make the payoffs.
“If prosecutors identified evidence of criminal conduct by Donald Trump while serving as President—and did not bring charges as they would have for any other individual—this would be the second time the President has not been held accountable for his actions due to his position,” committee chairman Elijah Cummings wrote in a 12-page letter to the deputy U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York. “The Office of the President should not be used as a shield for criminal conduct.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/dems-ask-whether-doj-memo-prevented-prosecuting-trump-for-hush-payments/ar-AAEA2dt?li=BBnb7Kz
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