Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bloomberg Law Podcast. I'm June Grosso. Every
Speaker 1: day we bring you insight and analysis into the most
Speaker 1: important legal news of the day. You can find more
Speaker 1: episodes of the Bloomberg Law Podcast on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud,
Speaker 1: and on Bloomberg dot com slash podcasts. President Trump continued
Speaker 1: to try to distance himself from Michael Coheny in tweets
Speaker 1: this morning. That follows a weekend in which Democrats like
Speaker 1: Congressman Adam Schiff said that Trump could face impeachment and
Speaker 1: even jail time over his connection to the hush money payments.
Speaker 1: Coin pleaded to I takeaway is there's a very real
Speaker 1: prospect that on the day Donald Trump leaves office, the
Speaker 1: Justice Department may indict him. That he may be the
Speaker 1: first president in quite some time to face the real
Speaker 1: prospect of jail time. Join me. Is Brad Moss a
Speaker 1: partner at Mark Zaide. Brad, do you agree with shift?
Speaker 1: Can the president face indictment when he leaves office? Is
Speaker 1: he likely to? Yes? I absolutely agree with the Congress
Speaker 1: And actually, a former prominent federal prosecutor, Andrew McCarthy, who
Speaker 1: has been a critic of the Russia probe, has nonetheless
Speaker 1: issued an op ed that's in Fox News, agreeing more
Speaker 1: or lesser shift that the president faces significant legal peril
Speaker 1: separate from anything that Special Counsel Mueller is doing with
Speaker 1: the Russian investigation. He faces possibly his greatest legal peril
Speaker 1: from this situation with his former attorney Michael Cohen and
Speaker 1: the campaign finance violations and fraud. And if he wasn't
Speaker 1: the president right now, it's a pretty decent bet that
Speaker 1: at least he would have been issued what's called the
Speaker 1: target letter by the Justice Department letting him know that
Speaker 1: he's possibly going to be indicted, if not actually already
Speaker 1: being indicted by this point, he would have almost certainly
Speaker 1: faced some type of scrutiny by now because of the
Speaker 1: standing guidance that the Justice Department operates under that says
Speaker 1: a sitting president should not be indicted and cannot be indicted.
Speaker 1: That's kind of spared him at the moment, but it
Speaker 1: certainly forces him to face some serious political problems, especially
Speaker 1: as things developed further, and it could result in the
Speaker 1: Just Department, the federal prosecutors in New York referring a
Speaker 1: report to the efting Attorney General. Thing. We think this
Speaker 1: needs to be referred to Congress for consideration under the
Speaker 1: impeachment process, which is the design of the Founding Fathers
Speaker 1: in terms of removing a president from office. President Richard
Speaker 1: Nixon was named by the Watergate Grand Jury as an
Speaker 1: unindicted co conspirator. Can that happen to President Trump? Sure?
Speaker 1: I mean, and I think actually that's more or less
Speaker 1: a rather reasonable interpretation of what came out of that
Speaker 1: sentencing memoranda from the federal prosecutors in the Cohen case.
Speaker 1: I think it's fair to say that the President is,
Speaker 1: in fact, at this point an unindicted co conspirator. The
Speaker 1: memoranda very clearly lays out that Mr Cohen acted at
Speaker 1: the direction and coordination with this client, which was Donald J. Trump.
Speaker 1: We know that this was done in their Their investigation
Speaker 1: has involved limited use of nity agreements with people at
Speaker 1: the Trump organization who cut the checks to reimburse Mr Cohen,
Speaker 1: as well as an individuals at and that Acquirer who
Speaker 1: are part of a separate but overlapping criminal conspiracy to
Speaker 1: do a similar hush payment agreement with a playboy playmate.
Speaker 1: This is really serious for the president, and this, more
Speaker 1: than anything, could damage him politically. This morning, President Trump
Speaker 1: tweeted and compared the payments by Cohen to President Obama's
Speaker 1: campaign paying a fine for campaign reporting violations. Is there
Speaker 1: a danger that this will be dismissed as just a
Speaker 1: campaign violation? Well, sure, you certainly have seen some of
Speaker 1: that political spin, and people who ultimately rely on the
Speaker 1: president for political support are going to go along those lines.
Speaker 1: There's going to be an element of tribalism here. Certain
Speaker 1: people in the president's camp will never desert him on
Speaker 1: that front. They'll say in the end, this is all
Speaker 1: just you know, overhyping a campaign finance violation. It's comparing
Speaker 1: apples to a luck not They're nothing similar and not
Speaker 1: even close to the same type of thing. What happened
Speaker 1: with the Obama people, and it's happened with other campaigns,
Speaker 1: was a failure to properly report what they're called last
Speaker 1: minute forty eight hour notice donations, donations that were otherwise legal.
Speaker 1: Would happen with the Cohen situation, has laid out in
Speaker 1: the sentencing memoranda, that was a criminal conspiracy to defraud
Speaker 1: the FEC, defraud the public, and to conceal contributions that
Speaker 1: themselves were far in excess of the acceptable limits. So, Brett,
Speaker 1: what about the statute of limitations if Trump wins another election. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so if you were to win, he was just if
Speaker 1: he were to serve out a second full you know,
Speaker 1: for your term, the special limitations would have run. So
Speaker 1: there's two options here. One is that the Justice Department
Speaker 1: could secure what is, you know, commonly known as a
Speaker 1: field indictment, so that the Statute of Limitations would be,
Speaker 1: as the term is called told and so it wouldn't
Speaker 1: have lapsed by the time he left office. But there's obviously,
Speaker 1: given the publicity surrounding this case, it's gonna be hard
Speaker 1: to keep that all under wraps at this point. So
Speaker 1: I think if the Just Department truly feels, after they've
Speaker 1: gotten through all the information they've already been securing from
Speaker 1: Mr Cohen and the individuals Trump Organization, the National Inquire,
Speaker 1: if they truly feel that there is a legal case
Speaker 1: they could otherwise bring against the president, I think they
Speaker 1: will draft a report. I think they'll provide it to
Speaker 1: the Acting Attorney General with a recommendation that he forwarded
Speaker 1: to Congress for considerations, saying this is outside of our
Speaker 1: control right now to handle. We cannot simply indicte a
Speaker 1: sitting president under our guidance, it is a political question
Speaker 1: for Congress to debate. In another sentencing memo on Friday,
Speaker 1: which was Sentencing Memo Day, the Mueller team documented the
Speaker 1: alleged lies that Paul Manafort told after he agreed to
Speaker 1: cooperate with them. What did you learn from that filing? Well,
Speaker 1: more than anything else, it is that despite all the
Speaker 1: claims of Manafort that they had cut off contact with
Speaker 1: the White House, we found out that months after he
Speaker 1: was invited, he was still coordinating and talking with the
Speaker 1: White House. And this is someone who has been separately
Speaker 1: indicted not only for all his money fraud and tax
Speaker 1: fraud issues, but for trying to engage in witness tampering.
Speaker 1: And so you have to wonder or those discussions between
Speaker 1: Paul Manaford's team and White House officials was that additional
Speaker 1: conspiracy to conceal relevant information that was at a additional
Speaker 1: conspiracy to obstruct justice. The fact that these people keep
Speaker 1: doing this really what makes you wonder where the lawyers
Speaker 1: are to stomp out this amateurism, saying you can't do this.
Speaker 1: There are certain lines you don't cross. And once he
Speaker 1: was invited, no one in the White House. No one
Speaker 1: in the Trump administration should have taken his call or
Speaker 1: exchanged any emails with him or anyone on his team.
Speaker 1: I'm still struggling to understand how Manifoort, who knows that
Speaker 1: has learned from experience, that Muller knows the answers and
Speaker 1: is following everything that goes on. Why would he think
Speaker 1: that he could get away with something like this a
Speaker 1: lifetime of arrogance and feeling for so many years, for
Speaker 1: so many decades, that he was above bala. I mean, remember,
Speaker 1: think of how many years ago your body laddering at
Speaker 1: tax fraw case arguably could have been brought against Paul
Speaker 1: Manaford is skated by on the thin edge of legality
Speaker 1: for so many years. These guys they get sloppy, they
Speaker 1: get arrogant, they think they can pull off anything, and
Speaker 1: you're seeing that with Paul Manaforts, the potential witness tempering,
Speaker 1: obstruction of justice. They just keep making the same mistakes.
Speaker 1: In the end, you know, you think about that, You
Speaker 1: think about all the President's men. The great line, these
Speaker 1: weren't really smart guys, and things got out of control.
Speaker 1: It's the exact same thing here, all right, we all
Speaker 1: should watch All the President's Men again. Thanks so much, Brad.
Speaker 1: That's Brad Moss. He's a partner at mark X. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening to the Bloomberg Law Podcast. You can subscribe
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Speaker 1: on bloomberg dot com slash podcast. I'm June Brasso. This
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