If Cohen is correct in his statements, and Donald Trump can be proven
guilty, then what we have is an illegal Executive Branch of
Government. Not just Donald Trump, but everyone he has appointed, and
everyone that they have hired or appointed. If Donald Trump has
committed the crimes he is being accused of, then we must insist on a
mass resignation of the Executive Branch. But while we are fussing
around with all these accusations, the Foxes are Raiding the American
Treasury. We will be bankrupt even if we win.
Carl Jarvis
On 8/22/18, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Of all the various explanations I've heard today of the implications of
what
Cohen said, This article seems to come closest to explaining the legal
reality. Of course, having said this, even if by some miracle, Trump were
impeached after the midterm elections, we'd still be in a bad situation,
given who our Vice President is. But maybe it's better to have someone
who's sane and evil, rather than insane and evil?
Miriam
Unindicted Co-Conspirator Again in White House: A Turning Point in American
History
By Juan Cole, Informed Comment
22 August 18
Historians will mark August 21, 2018, as a turning point in American
history.
President Donald Trump's personal lawyer pleaded guilty to 8 counts of
criminal wrongdoing that could carry a sentence of up to 65 years.
Most significantly, he pleaded guilty to having attempted illegally to
interfere in an election "in coordination with and at the direction of a
federal candidate for office."
AFP writes,
"Just days before the election, Cohen paid $130,000 to porn star Stormy
Daniels to keep quiet about her past with Trump.
He also was involved in buying for $150,000 the rights to the story of
Playboy model Karen McDougal about her alleged affair with Trump.
Those actions, which involved shell companies and offshore entities
controlled by Cohen, got him into legal trouble over banking, tax and
campaign finance laws.
Cohen initially said he used his own money to pay Daniels and was not
reimbursed. Trump, who first denied knowing anything about the payment, has
since conceded that Cohen was paid back."
Although Cohen was involved in a crime in preventing information from
surfacing relevant to the election by basically bribing eyewitnesses,
Trump's crime was not exactly the same. If you considered getting his
ex-lovers to remain quiet to be a campaign expense, he would have been
within his rights to spend money on it. Trump's crime would be in not
reporting it to the Federal Election Commission.
While some are arguing that neglecting to report a couple hundred thousands
of dollars in campaign expenses is a relatively minor crime, that is not
really true. Former presidential candidate John Edwards was prosecuted for
similar payments, to his lover Rielle Hunter, and the only reason the
Federal case failed was that prosecutors couldn't prove the money was paid
to keep the public from knowing about the affair, as opposed to keeping
Mrs.
Edwards in the dark. But given the timing of the payment to Ms. Daniels,
and
given the knowledge and cooperativeness of Mr. Cohen, prosecutors who
brought Trump up on charges would almost certainly prevail.
Trump is, of course, unlikely to be put on trial while in the presidency.
He
could, however, end up being deposed, just as Bill Clinton was, and then he
would either have to admit the affair and the payoff or continue to lie
about them. The latter course of action, given Cohen's own plea, would
certainly be perjury.
If Democrats can take the House in November, they could launch an
investigation that would throw up further evidence for Trump law-breaking,
or which might tempt him to continue lying, which could become perjury if
he
did it in formal circumstances.
The crux may be a matter of public opinion more than legal, in the end.
Above all, the likelihood that Trump's evangelical base can go on
pretending
he doesn't have serial affairs, and can go on denying the swampy corruption
at the center of this administration, is low. And without that base, Trump
has almost nothing.
Trump has been clever about having the people around him take the fall, a
fate he likely will inflict on his own son, Don Jr., with regard to the
meeting with the Russian government agent Natalia Veselnitskaya at Trump
Tower in summer of 2016.
But with Cohen's plea, for the first time someone has laid a hand on Trump
himself. There are almost certainly emails or recordings to back Cohen up.
For the first time since Watergate, the president is an unindicted
co-conspirator in a crime under continued investigation. Whether or not
impeachment is ultimately in the offing, Trump's cripple presidency just
became a quadriplegiac and is now living on borrowed time, one way or
another. And, it seems certain that when he goes out of office, he is going
to prison for crimes committed in and prosecuted by New York state.
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