Q& A: What these legal cases mean for Trump

Does Cohen’s guilty plea mean Trump violated the law?

Cohen said in court that he made one payment “in coordination and at the direction of a candidate for federal office” and the other “under direction of the same candidate”. The amounts and dates all line up with the payments made to Daniels and McDougal.

Prosecutors did not go as far as Cohen did in open court in pointing the finger at the president, saying Cohen acted “in coordination with a candidate or campaign for federal office for purposes of influencing the election”. Legal experts said there could be multiple reasons for government lawyers’ more cautious statements.

Trump denied to reporters in April that he knew anything about Cohen’s payments to Daniels, though the explanations from the president and Giuliani have shifted multiples times since.

Does Cohen’s plea mean Trump could be forced to submit to questions?

Trump’s lawyers have been negotiating with Mueller about whether the president would submit to an interview as part of Mueller’s Russia investigation. Now Daniels’ attorney Michael Avenatti says he’ll renew efforts to get Trump to submit to a deposition in a lawsuit Daniels filed to invalidate a nondisclosure agreement she signed ahead of the 2016 election.

Daniels’ case is currently on hold, but Avenatti said he’ll be looking to get that hold lifted.

If there is evidence of wrongdoing, can Trump be indicted?

The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel has held that a sitting president cannot be indicted.

Trump’s lawyers have said that Mueller plans to adhere to that guidance, though Mueller’s office has never independently confirmed that. There would presumably be no bar against charging a president after he or she leaves the White House.

How does Cohen’s plea relate to the Mueller investigation?

While the Manafort case was part of Mueller’s investigation, the Cohen case was not. It was handled by prosecutors in New York. Still, it could give Mueller a boost.

Laurie Levenson, a former federal prosecutor and professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, argued that Cohen’s plea knocks back the argument that the investigations swirling around Trump are a “witch hunt,” as the president has called Mueller’s Russia investigation. —