TRUMP’S IMPEACHMENT WARNING
Do that and US economy will crash, says president
PRESIDENT Donald Trump and his allies tried to head off mounting talk of his impeachment, warning it would sink the world’s largest economy and spark a public “revolt”.
Speaking on the eve of a closely-watched meeting of central bank chiefs yesterday, Trump again took aim at his attorneygeneral, Jeff Sessions, prompting a rare reaction from the embattled Justice Department chief.
After Trump was implicated as a co-conspirator in two campaign finance violations, he and his closest advisers offered dire words of warning about the consequences of removing him from office.
“I will tell you what, if I ever got impeached, I think the market would crash, I think everybody would be very poor,” the president warned in an interview aired on Thursday on talk show Fox and Friends.
“I don’t know how you can impeach somebody who has done a great job.”
The president’s personal lawyer-cum-spokesman Rudy Giuliani echoed that warning.
“You would only impeach him for political reasons and the American people would revolt against that,” he told Sky News while on a golf course in Scotland.
In another hammer blow on Thursday, The Wall Street Journal and other US media said David Pecker, CEO of tabloid publisher American Media, had been given immunity by prosecutors investigating the payments, opening a new area of vulnerability for Trump.
Pecker’s company publishes the National Enquirer.
As the legal net closed in, Trump renewed attacks on Sessions in an apparent attempt to have him squash investigations that could endanger his presidency.
“I put in an attorney-general that never took control of the Justice Department,” he complained to Fox News, fuelling rumours he may fire Sessions and install someone more pliant.
But Sessions quickly hit back, saying he would not be swayed in a remarkable public broadside.
“While I am attorney-general, the actions of the Department of Justice will not be improperly influenced by political considerations,” he said.
Lawmakers from Trump’s Republican Party warned the president they would not confirm a new attorney-general if Sessions was fired.