CNN is out with a piece that goes into detail about how proscutors in the Southern Disatrict of New York wanted to charge ex-President Donald Trump with using campaign finbance money to pay off Sormy Daniel’s….
They didn’t….
The US Justice Dept. has this ‘rule’ that that they do NOT charge sitting President’s with crimes….
(The King has immunity?)….
Even after Trump left the Presidency it seemsa the rule was in effect….
There WAS a serious effort to go ahead…
But the OVERIDING hindernce IS America has NOT charged an American President UP TO NOW with crime….
We now have the Manhattan DA pursuing the basicly the same case….
We’ll see if Alvin Bragg has the same obstacle ….
BTW?
There ARE several places where the ex-President may make history is getting criminally charged…
Days before then-President Donald Trump left the White House, federal prosecutors in New York discussed whether to potentially charge Trump with campaign finance crimes once he was out of office, according to a new book from CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig.
Prosecutors from the Southern District of New York developed significant evidence against Trump when they charged his former attorney Michael Cohen in 2018 over a hush money scheme paying two women claiming affairs with Trump, including adult film star Stormy Daniels, Honig writes. But prosecutors did not consider charging Trump at the time because of longstanding Justice Department guidance that a sitting president cannot be indicted.
With Trump about to leave office in January 2021, however, Audrey Strauss, the acting US attorney, held multiple discussions with a small group of prosecutors to discuss its evidence against Trump. They decided to not seek an indictment Trump for several reasons, Honig writes, including the political ramifications and the fact that Trump’s other scandals, such as efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and the January 6, 2021, insurrection, “made the campaign finance violations seem somehow trivial and outdated by comparison.”
“We were well aware of the prudential reasons why you wouldn’t charge a president, even after he was out of office,” one person with knowledge of the investigation told Honig.
Honig’s book, “Untouchable,” explores how Trump and other powerful people “get away with it,” focusing both on the former president as well as some of the mob bosses Honig took on when he was an assistant US attorney in New York from 2004-2012 and a state prosecutor in New Jersey. The book was obtained by CNN ahead of its January 31 release date.
While federal prosecutors in New York opted not to pursue their case against Trump, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg appears to be looking into the matter again. Cohen met this month with prosecutors from his office, the first such meeting in more than a year and the clearest sign to date that the Manhattan district attorney is zeroing in on the Trump Organization’s involvement in the hush-money payments….
Note….
Manhattan DA Briggs is trying to keep a lid on this case…
“The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office is warning that a tell-all bookabout its stalled investigation into former President Donald Trump could derail the office’s probe and leave the author of the book, a former top prosecutor there, in legal jeopardy for violating a secretive nondisclosure agreement,” the Daily Beast reports.
“The NDA warns that ‘any work performed for the office’ is ‘privileged and confidential.’ That clause appears to directly conflict with a memoir that promises juicy details in what has so far been a failed effort to indict Trump.”