Illegal payouts ‘impeachable offence’, says senior Democrat

WASHINGTON: The incoming Democratic chairman of the House Judiciary Committee said on Sunday it would be an “impeachable offence” if it’s proved that US President Donald Trump directed illegal hush-money payments to women, stressing a need for continuing investigations and a deeper look by Congress into the extent of presidential misconduct.

Representative Jerry Nadler of New York described the details in prosecutors’ filings Friday in the case of Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, as evidence that Trump was “at the centre of a massive fraud”.

Prosecutors for the first time link Trump to a federal crime of illegal payments to buy the silence of two women during the 2016 campaign, and they lay out previously undisclosed contacts with Russians during the 2016 election.

“They would be impeachable offenses,” Nadler said of the illegal payments. “Whether they are important enough to justify an impeachment is a different question, but certainly they’d be impeachable offences because even though they were committed before the president became president, they were committed in the service of fraudulently obtaining the office.”

Nadler said it was too early to say whether Congress would pursue impeachment proceedings based on the illegal payments alone. Lawmakers would weigh the gravity of the offence to justify “overturning” the 2016 election result, he said.