Trump faces legal peril if he loses

NEW YORK — Trailing in the polls a day before the election, President Donald Trump faces the prospect of swapping the White House for the Big House.

He’s directly implicated in campaign finance crimes and is under investigation by both Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance and New York State Attorney General Letitia James for alleged fraud in his business dealings. On top of that, he faces civil defamation lawsuits from women accusing him of sexual assault.

Trump’s former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, knows the stakes better than just about anyone in the president’s inner circle.

“I believe there are more significant charges that will be brought by a multitude of agencies, both federal and state,” Cohen told the Daily News of Trump’s potential criminal liability if he loses the election. “Tax evasion, misrepresentation to a bank, bank fraud, wire fraud, insurance fraud … to name just a few.”

Cohen, who’s serving a three- year prison sentence in home confinement for crimes committed on Trump’s behalf, has been cooperating in Vance’s investigation, according to sources.

For the past four years, Trump’s special status as president has protected him from federal indictment and helped delay a reckoning in many cases, as the Justice Department has longstanding policies against charging sitting commanders-in-chief.

If Trump loses Tuesday’s contest, the dynamics shift, though.

“There’s a legal change and a sort of political change. Legally, he no longer has whatever immunities he had when he was president. Politically, I think things shift — one would not bring a criminal prosecution against a sitting president unless it was the most compelling case imaginable,” said Bruce Green, a Fordham Law professor and former assistant U.S. attorney at the Southern District of New York.

Trump’s legal peril includes hush money payments made to women in the lead-up to the 2016 election. Cohen pleaded guilty to arranging the payouts to porn star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal to prevent them from going public with stories of their alleged affairs with Trump. The $130,000 payment to Daniels far exceeded the $2,700 limit on contributions to a candidate. A $150,000 payment to McDougal flouted a ban on corporations contributing to a candidate.

Manhattan federal prosecutors definitively linked Trump to the scheme in 2018, writing that Cohen “acted in coordination with and at the direction of Individual-1.”

Individual-1, Cohen confirmed under oath, is Trump.