It was a bad day for Trump, but don’t expect impeachment

Tuesday was a bad day for President Donald Trump. Not only was his former campaign manager found guilty on eight charges, his former fixer pleaded guilty to other campaign-related crimes which could also implicate Trump.

In short, paying hush money to two women, who you allegedly had affairs with, is actually illegal in the context of a presidential campaign. In Trump’s case, the allegation is that he used Michael Cohen to pay hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels (aka Stephanie Clifford) and Playboy model Karen McDougal during his 2016 presidential campaign.

“That’s a violation of federal campaign finance law, it can result in a fine and a penalty being paid,” former Washington State Attorney General Rob McKenna told KIRO Radio’s Dave Ross. “They could charge it criminally. But there are a couple problems with that.”

“It’s inherently illegal to spend money to influence an election without reporting it,” he said. “That’s a campaign expenditure. It’s exactly what they went after Senator John Edwards for doing when he arraigned to have a $1 million payment made to his mistress who had had his child out of wedlock. They actually went after him on criminal charges and they failed to convict him.”

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It’s hard to make such criminal charges stick, which is why it could be difficult to pursue in Trump’s case. Also, McKenna notes, under President Bill Clinton, the Department of Justice issued a memorandum stating that a sitting president cannot be indicted.

“It’s unlikely that this Department of Justice is going to overturn the Clinton-era opinion on that,” he said.

“My guess is that they’ll go after Trump and his campaign for the civil violation of failing to report campaign expenditures,” McKenna said. “There might also be a conspiracy element to it, but the standard of proof is high.”

McKenna said authorities may even wait until Trump is out of office before going after him for campaign finance violations. And people should not expect him to be out of office early, based on Tuesday’s developments. Impeachment is unlikely.

“They could use it for a basis of impeachment, simply because impeachment could be on nearly any grounds,” McKenna said. “The language is ‘high crimes and misdemeanors.’ The impeachment process has always been highly political. A lot of people confuse impeachment with removal from office. They are not the same thing. Impeachment is an indictment, which is the House’s job if they have a majority of votes to move forward with that indictment. And then the Senate would have to convict with a 2/3 majority voting to convict in order to remove a sitting president from office. I just think that is highly unlikely.”

“The Democrats said themselves during the Clinton era that trying to cover up extramarital affairs is not a basis for removal from office,” he added. “So those words will come back to haunt them.”

Bad day for Trump

CBS news correspondent Major Garrett explains that Tuesday’s developments were a one-two punch to Trump’s image. Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort was found guilty on eight charges, mostly involving tax evasion and bank fraud. There was a mistrial on 10 other charges. This came shortly after Trump’s fixer, Cohen, pleaded guilty to charges relating to paying off the two women, amounting to campaign finance violations.

The two cases are entirely separate, but deal with very similar charges.

“So it brings it right to the edge of the Trump campaign, and it certainly suggests the president knew far more about this than he has publicly acknowledged … that it came at the direction and behest of the campaign and the candidate, which creates a linkage,” Garrett said.

“In Michael Cohen’s case, you have three crimes he pled guilty to that are about the same kinds of transactions – hush money in the course of the 2016 campaign,” he said. “One was fraud to obtain a home equity loan. Why was that home equity loan obtained? To create the cash available to pay the hush money payments. Then you have a campaign finance violation, alleged to and pled guilty to by Michael Cohen, to carry out these payments to influence, positively they hoped and probably did, Donald Trump’s campaign for the presidency in 2016. Then a fraudulent payment to a corporation – the same thing.”

“Which doesn’t necessarily mean the president is a co-conspirator, or will be indicted or anything of that nature, but it undercuts all their denials about knowledge or cooperation or participation because Michael Cohen pled guilty that he was directed by the Trump campaign to do these things,” he added.

In Manafort’s case, he faced 18 charges and was found guilty on eight. The crimes, however, don’t reach as closely to Trump’s campaign as Cohen’s charges.

“A conviction is still a conviction,” Garrett said. “Prison sentences will still be served. And the character of Paul Manafort, one-time general chairman of the president’s campaign, was submitted to a court of law … and convicted on eight counts anyway … Those crimes are now part of the record. They are part of Paul Manafort’s life. And he’s got another trial coming up in September. You could say they didn’t convict him on all 18 counts and be accurate, but that doesn’t mean Mueller’s team did not put together a case, bring it to a jury, deal with the adversarial defense attorney’s council, and still convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that there was sufficient evidence that crimes were committed. That’s a real deal.”

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