Trump’s options narrowing as investigations close in

WASHINGTON (AFP) – President Donald Trump is running out of options to avoid possible impeachment or prevent his family from prosecution, legal experts say.

The felony convictions of two former top aides Tuesday demonstrated that Trump’s nonstop attacks have failed to impede Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia collusion and obstruction investigation against him.

And while no one knows how strong a case Mueller has built against the president and his inner circle, Trump’s own behavior suggests he feels intense pressure.

Though he repeatedly says there was no crime committed, Trump has tried to disrupt and delay the investigation, and has avoided for months being interviewed by Mueller.

He insisted Wednesday he did nothing wrong after his longtime attorney implicated him in illicit hush payments made before the 2016 election, as experts warned the legal maelstrom swirling around the Republican leader could further threaten his presidency.

On perhaps the worst day of Trump’s tumultuous time in office, his former fixer Michael Cohen told a federal judge Tuesday he had made illegal campaign contributions – in the form of payments to silence women alleging affairs with Trump – at his boss’s request.

Cohen’s statements came on a day of head-spinning political drama for Trump, whose former campaign chief Paul Manafort was found guilty within the same hour of federal tax and bank fraud, in the first case sent to trial by the special prosecutor probing Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

While the full implications for the real estate mogul-turned-president remain unclear, Cohen’s statements – and the prospect of more revelations to come – put Trump in legal peril.

But the mercurial US leader appeared determined to ride out the latest storm.

After first accusing Cohen of making up “stories” to cut a plea deal, he then tweeted that Cohen’s actions were “not a crime,” and went further in an interview with “Fox and Friends,” saying they were “not even a campaign violation.”

In that interview, Trump said the hush payments were financed with his own money – to which Cohen had access – and that while he had no knowledge of them at the time, he had since been fully transparent.

“My first question when I heard about it was, ‘Did they come out of the campaign?’, because that could be a little dicey,” he said of the payments – believed to have been made to porn star Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal.

“But they didn’t come out of the campaign,” he said. “They came from me and I tweeted about it.”

In practice, an indictment is highly unlikely: since 2000, the Justice Department position has been that a sitting president is “immune from indictment as well as from further criminal process.”

And while the president could theoretically be impeached, it remains a remote prospect in a Republican-dominated Congress where even Democrats are focused on letting Robert Mueller’s Russia probe play out.

Trump’s response was to discredit Cohen – contrasting his actions with the “brave” Manafort.

“Unlike Michael Cohen, he refused to ‘break’ – make up stories in order to get a ‘deal,’” tweeted the president.

“If anyone is looking for a good lawyer, I would strongly suggest that you don’t retain the services of Michael Cohen!”