No former president has ever been charged with a crime. But former President Donald Trump has a legal minefield ahead of him. Email not displaying correctly?
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** The One-Minute Meeting
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Yes, there is a lot going on in the world, but Donald Trump, once again, will suck up a disproportionate amount of ink, airtime and pixels.
Today, former Trump legal adviser Michael Cohen will testify before a New York grand jury about whether the jury should believe his version of how Trump paid adult film star Stormy Daniels to stay quiet about a sexual encounter. You may wonder why it would be illegal to pay hush money about an embarrassing episode. The answer is that it is not. But it would be illegal to hide such payments inside business records. It could also be illegal if Trump’s attorney paid the hush money, which benefitted Trump’s campaign, and didn’t declare it as a campaign contribution. Could Trump be indicted and arrested this week? Maybe. But this is only one chapter in a litany of indictments he could face imminently.
Trump also faces criminal investigations in the Jan. 6 insurrection. A grand jury in Georgia recently turned over its investigation into how Trump leaned on state officials there to overturn Georgia’s 2020 presidential vote. Over the weekend, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported on a new recording in which Trump pressures Georgia’s then-House speaker to call a special legislative session to overturn the vote. A special prosecutor is looking into the top secret documents Trump took with him to Mar-a-Lago and New York’s attorney general wants the Trump family to pay a quarter of a billion dollars for misstating property values to get preferential loans and insurance rates.
No former president has ever been charged with a crime. This former president has a legal minefield ahead of him. In today’s column, you will hear from a law professor who explains why it is so difficult to charge a sitting president, but not a former president.
Paying off a porn star and lying about it is a scandal, for sure.
The bigger issue is whether everybody, no matter how prominent or powerful, is subject to the rule of law.
And there is a corollary question of whether a person’s prominence and the controversy that he attracts makes him a target for overzealous prosecution.
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