How Trump Could Be Prosecuted After the White House
I think both should happen---The Dems in the House Impeach Trump (let the senate GOP make fools of themselves!!) and then hopefully someone will prosecute Trump the day he leaves the Oval office!!
How Trump Could Be Prosecuted After the White House
Impeachment is a big question mark, but an outline of the case against an ex-President Trump is already taking shape.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/06/06/how-trump-could-be-prosecuted-after-the-white-house-227050
By RENATO MARIOTTI
June 06, 2019
Renato Mariotti is the Legal Affairs Columnist for POLITICO Magazine. He is a former federal prosecutor and host of the “On Topic” podcast.
With Congress enmeshed in a fraught debate over whether to impeach President Donald Trump, Robert Mueller’s brief and dramatic news conference provided a sharp reminder that impeachment is not the only option for addressing the president’s alleged misdeeds.
The outlines of a potential civilian prosecution of a former president Trump are already emerging. While there are reports of tax dodges, illegal campaign contributions, and improper foreign contributions to his inaugural committee—among other things—investigations into those claims are ongoing. There is, however, an overwhelming case that the president engaged in obstruction of justice—his effort to stop the special counsel’s office from probing his campaign’s ties to Russia.
In the second volume of his 448-page report, Mueller sets forth evidence of obstruction of justice that any competent federal prosecutor could use to draft an indictment. And Mueller made it clear himself that his detailed report was intended, in part, to “preserve the evidence” because “a President does not have immunity after he leaves office.”
Although it’s impossible to know exactly what a prosecution of Citizen Trump would look like, or who would conduct it, it’s already possible to project some paths a likely prosecution would take. In the eyes of a seasoned former federal prosecutor looking only at the evidence we have so far, here are the likely routes—and what Trump has to worry about next.
The Three Strongest Cases
Mueller’s team examined 10 distinct courses of conduct by Trump that could constitute obstruction of justice, but it’s not clear there is sufficient evidence to prove them all beyond a reasonable doubt. Three of the potential charges, however, are so strong that they are virtually certain to be included in any indictment of Trump. (They’re strong enough that over 1,000 former federal prosecutors signed a letter stating that Trump would be indicted if he were not president.)
The strongest count would be his attempt to fire Mueller, the man appointed to investigate the Russian government’s interference in the 2016 election and the possibility that the Trump campaign conspired with it. Very simply, obstruction of justice is when someone acts to undermine an investigation with the intent to do so, and there can be no serious question that firing Mueller would have curtailed the investigation. By the time Trump tried to fire Mueller, he knew the special counsel was also investigating him for obstructing justice. Trump tweeted about how he was under investigation a day before he tried to fire Mueller, and White House counsel Don McGahn warned Trump about his “exposure” for obstructing justice......................................
= new reply since forum marked as read
