Russia meddling probe threatens not just Trump, but those in his orbit
The more that special counsel Robert Mueller and federal prosecutors reveal, the darker grow the legal clouds over US President Donald Trump and his associates.
Trump’s own justice department has now implicated him in a crime, accusing him of directing illegal hush-money payments to women during his 2016 presidential campaign.
Mueller keeps finding new instances of Trump associates lying about their contacts with Russia during an election the Kremlin worked to sway in the Republican’s favour.
The president hasn’t been charged with any crimes. He may never be. Whether a president can be prosecuted while in office remains a matter of legal dispute.
But Trump also hasn’t been cleared of wrongdoing. Each new legal filing underscores that the president is a central figure in investigations that already have brought down several people who worked closely with him and remain a threat to others in Trump’s orbit.
Even if the president is never charged with illegal activity, the months of investigations and legal wrangling have cast a pall over his administration and exposed the culture of lying that has surrounded Trump, both in and out of office.
Trump allies argue that if Mueller had information that Trump broke the law, the special counsel would have made his case against him by now.
To the president and his supporters, the fact that the special counsel has been working for well over a year without making a direct accusation against Trump means the investigation is simply an effort to damage the president politically.
Mueller hasn’t ruled out that the prospect of election season coordination between Moscow and the Trump campaign, and only recently received written answers from the president about possible Russian interference.
Yet the most precarious legal situation for Trump appears to be separate from Mueller’s inquiry: an assertion by federal prosecutors in New York that Trump directed his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, to make illegal payments during the campaign to silence women alleging extramarital affairs.
Republican Adam Schiff, who will oversee the House intelligence committee next year, said that a court filing on Friday “implicates the president very directly” in a crime.
“It puts the issue squarely before the justice department whether a sitting president should be indicted or whether the justice department has to wait until he’s out of office,” Schiff said.
WASHINGTON: