Mueller Investigation: Trump Likely to Be Indicted, But Will He Be Impeached?

The 40-page sentencing memo filed by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York for former Trump personal attorney Michael Cohen is the basis for an indictment against the president, according to Andrew McCarthy.

McCarthy believes the charges will be for violating campaign finance laws. It's alleged that Cohen and Trump paid off two women to hide their sexual liaisons with Trump during the 2016 campaign. The violation occurred when Cohen made the payments and cooked the books to hide them. That's fraud and Cohen will go to jail for it.

As McCarthy points out, the prosecutors have had Trump in their sights from the beginning:

But when Cohen pleaded guilty in August, prosecutors induced him to make an extraordinary statement in open court: the payments to the women were made “in coordination with and at the direction of” the candidate for federal office – Donald Trump.

Prosecutors would not have done this if the president was not on their radar screen. Indeed, if the president was not implicated, I suspect they would not have prosecuted Cohen for campaign finance violations at all. Those charges had a negligible impact on the jail time Cohen faces, which is driven by the more serious offenses of tax and financial institution fraud, involving millions of dollars.

Trump has denied he had sex with the women as well as denying any payoff. But why indict Trump when violations like this are usually handled administratively and rarely rise to the level of a crime?

Moreover, campaign finance infractions are often settled by payment of an administrative fine, not turned into felony prosecutions. To be sure, federal prosecutors in New York City have charged them as felonies before – most notably in 2014 against Dinesh D’Souza, whom Trump later pardoned.

In marked contrast, though, when it was discovered that Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign was guilty of violations involving nearly $2 million – an amount that dwarfs the $280,000 in Cohen’s case – the Obama Justice Department decided not to prosecute. Instead, the matter was quietly disposed of by a $375,000 fine by the Federal Election Commission.

The sticking point is Cohen's efforts to conceal the payments from the FEC. The prosecutors will allege that Trump was involved in that process.

The sentencing memo for Cohen argues that the hush money payments were not merely unreported. It states that Cohen and the Trump organization – the president’s company – went to great lengths to conceal them by fraudulent bookkeeping.

Equally significantly, Cohen was not charged with merely making illegal donations. He was charged in the first campaign finance count with causing a company to make illegal donations.

That company was the National Enquirer, which bought Karen McDougal's story for $150,000 and then buried it at Cohen's request. There was apparently a promise to repay the company -- a promise that was never kept.

Throughout the memo is the suggestion that Trump knew what Cohen was doing and ordered him to do it. Cohen has already admitted lying to Congress so the question of his credibility in telling prosecutors that Trump was in on the payoff scheme remains open.

Trump is not without a defense in this case and it's no slam dunk. Plus, Justice Department guidance states that a sitting president cannot be indicted. There is much debate over that point -- a question that could be tied up in court for years.

So Democrats have to ask themselves if they should impeach Donald Trump for violations of the campaign finance laws.

More importantly, do campaign finance violations qualify as “high crimes and misdemeanors,” which is the constitutional standard for impeachment? It is hard to imagine an infraction that the Justice Department often elects not to prosecute is sufficiently egregious to rise to that level, but the debate on this point between partisans would be intense.

To kick Trump out of office, Democrats are going to have to find 13 Republican senators to convict the president in a Senate trial. Over a violation of campaign finance laws? Really?

That's why all this excitement and hysteria over the prosecution filing in the sentencing of Michael Cohen is partisans blowing smoke.

You are right. 67 votes. Votes that are not there now and never will be there. Did you see Nutty Nan and slimey Chuck get owned by Trump on TV yesterday? Do you think these inept tools are going to engineer impeachment and removal? Uh no! They aren't. Here is what will happen. Starting in January the Democrats will go on a 24 month run of using their House majority to run their mouths and make sure no legislation gets passed. It will be congressional gridlock with the Dems on TV blaming the GOP in the Senate and Trump for obfuscating their agenda. That's about it. We control the presidency and the Senate. Trump will still be able to accomplish a lot administratively during this period. And that it what he will do. By 2020 the Dems will have irritated everyone so much we should easily retake the House. Meanwhile I believe we just got rid of about 40 unwanted RINOs from office. All this talk about impeachment is ridiculous so just take a look at who is talking it up. The same person who ad nauseum insisted Mueller was really secretly working with Trump to get Hillary and the Podestas. Gee somebody forgot to tell Mueller. 😆

I vividly recall the way the Media and the special Prosecutors wore Nixon down. He could have ended the whole thing right at the start, but he didn’t. He could have burned the tapes, but he didn’t. He also wasn’t really well liked when it came down to it.

When his approvals got into the 30s, the GOP started turning on him, one by one. I think it was Bush, Sr? Who told him he needed to resign.

I don’t think the same will happen to Trump, but I wish to God Trump would get in front of the public more and rally us to stand our ground on this war with China.

The media, the Cavutos and other wind bags, are caving as they see their portfolios getting hit, but we have to hang together as Americans.

JUST THINK HOW MUCH CAN BE DONE, IT TRUMP HAD SOME BACKING FROM SOME OF THE DEMS AND ALL OF THE GOP.

The FISA will show GB was involved in a coup. Relations with GB will be extremely strained when that becomes public.

Critics, such as Rubio and Burr and others who always pound their chests about “national security” will claim that this has endangered national security with an ally. No, it won’t be true, but that doesn’t matter. Rubio, Sasse, etc. hate Trump and are looking for any-—in their minds, LEGITIMATE-—reason to get rid of him.

I don’t think they can make that case with the campaign finance violation, but I think they will try to make it with FISA release. Practically, it means if there is an impeachment, to release the FISA stuff would (in my opinion) cost Trump 4-6 GOP acquittal votes.

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