Trump’s Tweeting ‘Could Be Grounds For Mueller To Obtain A Gag Order On Him,’ Says Watergate Prosecutor
Donald Trump’s tweeting could land him in real trouble.
A slew of constitutional experts and politicians, many of them belonging to the GOP, have advised the president to stop tweeting for his own benefit in the past. But the president, who has made it a habit to tweet out everything whether it may be a matter of personal bashing or policy, hasn’t heeded those suggestions. Some hoped the Mueller indictments of his former campaign manager Paul Manafort and foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos earlier this week will finally give GOP enough of a reason to forcefully rein in Trump’s almost compulsive need to share his opinions on the micro-blogging platform. But now when even that seems like a far-fetched idea, considering Donald Trump has only become more aggressive in his tweets since the indictments and the Senate Republicans seem completely unperturbed by it, prosecutors feel Robert Mueller might be pushed into obtaining a gag order on the President, according to Politico.
“There is a reason why we have a norm against presidential interference in criminal investigations. President Trump is the living, breathing proof-case for that norm,” said Paul Rosenzweig, senior counsel from the Kenneth Starr investigation into President Bill Clinton.
Trump’s recent lamentations on Larry Connor’s radio show, where he cribbed about the fact that he could not weave his control over the Justice Department and the FBI because of being the President, is something that will not be taken lightly by Mueller’s team. Even more astonishingly, Trump took to Twitter to instigate the Justice Department to focus its energies on investigating Hillary Clinton for her role in the Uranium One Deal, a scandal which has been extensively debunked by fact-checkers.
Everybody is asking why the Justice Department (and FBI) isn't looking into all of the dishonesty going on with Crooked Hillary & the Dems..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 3, 2017
Former Watergate prosecutor: Mueller may have grounds “to obtain a gag order on Trump”https://t.co/9fVWs0Purj by @DanMartinTalks
— The American Independent (@AmerIndependent) November 4, 2017
“Any probe would be suspect from the get-go because it was instigated by Trump, against his former political rival, and was promised during the campaign and then only revived when Trump got into his own political hot water,” said Peter Zeidenberg, a former Justice prosecutor during the George W Bush presidency.
“I cannot imagine DOJ would entertain this — at least I would hope not. It would set a horrendous precedent if the president of the United States could dictate to the DOJ who should be investigated and then start that practice by investigating his former political rival.”
Trump’s habit of handing out vigilante virtual justice through Twitter has not helped prosecutors in the past. Bowe Bergdhal, the U.S. Army sergeant whom Trump termed a “traitor” after he deserted a military post in Afghanistan, was sentenced to no prison time, partly thanks to the oversimplification of his whole case by Trump. Bergdahl’s lead attorney said that “Trump’s remarks about the case could be used during the appeals process to get any sentence overturned,” Politico reported. This week, when eight people died in New York after a Uzbek immigrant, Sayfullo Saipov, mauled them over in a rented truck at the twisted ideological behest of ISIS, Trump called for a death penalty on Twitter, raising alarm bells among prosecutors who claimed that Saipov’s defense could use the President’s tweets to appeal for a lenient sentence.
NYC terrorist was happy as he asked to hang ISIS flag in his hospital room. He killed 8 people, badly injured 12. SHOULD GET DEATH PENALTY!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 2, 2017
But it is Donald Trump’s categorization of former campaign staff, George Papadopoulos, as a “low-level volunteer” and a non-credible witness, which is something that could come back to haunt him, says former Watergate prosecutor Nick Akerman. According to Akerman, Papadopoulos is now a potential government witness who is likely to be called in a federal trial, and defaming him could spell a world of trouble for the President.
“This could be grounds for Mueller to obtain a gag order on Trump. It would be unprecedented, but he is interfering with the government’s right to a fair trial,”Akerman said.
What the prosecutors say might be true: perhaps the only way to stop President Donald Trump from tweeting and thereby interfering with the process of justice is to get a gag order against him, and Robert Mueller might already be working on that.
[Featured Image by Mark Wilson/Getty Images]
