Donald Trump Claims Cohen Filings ‘Clear’ Him, But Legal Experts Disagree
President Donald Trump posted a tweet today in response to two court filings submitted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team and New York federal prosecutors.
“Totally clears the President. Thank you!”
The two sentencing memos against Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen, published by Axios, recommend that Cohen serves between 51 and 63 months for four crimes: Illegal campaign contributions, making false statements to the United States Congress, making false statements to a financial institution, and willful tax evasion.
While Trump may think that the Cohen filings “clear” him, legal experts disagree. Reacting to the president’s Twitter message, a slew of legal experts took to social media to point out how devastating the Cohen filings could be for Donald Trump’s presidency, Alternet reports. According to former federal prosecutor Mimi Rocah, the filings, on the contrary, “totally implicate” Trump.
In addition, former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti opined that the New York federal prosecutors actually concluded Trump “committed a felony,” while University of Alabama law professor Joyce Alene went a step further, calling Donald Trump a “crook.”
Former Special Counsel Ryan Goodman observed that Robert Mueller “nailed” Michael Cohen for “lying to the public,” which should “send shivers” down the spines of Donald Trump, his son Donald Trump Jr., longtime Republican operative Roger Stone, and other individuals implicated in the case.
“Tell me again why Trump’s business interests aren’t a relevant concern?” national security lawyer Bradley P. Moss asked, pointing out that Trump Jr. wasn’t the only individual approached by Russian nationals, according to the Cohen filings, but that Cohen himself was approached by the Kremlin in order to “pursue a political synergy” in return for help with building a Trump Tower in Moscow.
George Conway, who is White House counselor and former Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway’s husband and a staunch Trump critic, added that Trump “coordinated with Cohen” in order to commit two felonies.
Opinion: The latest filings show that nobody can save Trump now https://t.co/1Ct8s2KzUJ
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) December 8, 2018
MSNBC legal analyst and former Department of Justice official Matthew Miller alleged in a Twitter message that court filings against Michael Cohen show that the Trump campaign violated campaign finance laws in an effort to sway the 2016 presidential election.
The president and his lawyer violated campaign finance laws to influence the outcome of the election while his campaign chair was meeting with an intelligence asset of a foreign government that was trying to influence the outcome of the election. Not very legal and very cool.
— Matthew Miller (@matthewamiller) December 7, 2018
This is not the first time for legal experts to predict the end of Donald Trump’s presidency. Their predictions have, evidently, not come true thus far, but as Robert Mueller and his team march on, many are joining the choir and arguing that the walls are closing in on Donald Trump. Most recently, as ABC News reported, a slew of legal experts took to Twitter to argue that Donald Trump’s tweets about Roger Stone could constitute either obstruction of justice or witness tampering.
