Raw Story reports from interviews on Morning Joe.
As we at Politizoom reported yesterday, President Donald Trump amended his financial disclosure forms to show a payment to attorney Michael Cohen — and a former top law enforcement official says he’s in “trouble.”
The Office of Government Ethics publicly asked the Department of Justice to investigate the reimbursement to Cohen, being “publicly asked” is essentially a criminal referral. Former FBI official Frank Figliuzzi explained to MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” what the news means for the president and his legal team.
Figliuzzi came up with three possible scenarios fitting the facts known:
“I come up with three scenarios, two of them are awful for the president,” said Figliuzzi, the former FBI assistant director for counterintelligence.
“The first one lacks credulity, that is that the president knew nothing about the payments,” Figliuzzi said. “He’s a good guy trying to repay his lawyer, Cohen, who tells him after the fact, ‘I need compensation.’ We’ve gone beyond that because Giuliani has said that the president knows Michael takes care of such things.”
“Scenario No. 2 is the that president knew this was being done, he knew fictitious corporations might be set up,” the former FBI official said. “He knew a bank, a loan might have been set up fictitiously and there was money laundering or foreign governments involved. That makes him a co-conspirator for those underlying violations.”
“The third scenario is he found out later that things done were illegal and he paid Michael back,” Figliuzzi added. “That makes him an accessory after the fact. He’s in trouble.”
Yeah, sounds like trouble, until one considers all the other stuff found on Trump, and then maybe this sounds like a “side story.” But, we must remember, that “side stories” are often the easiest to prove, and it should not – or at least it not normally be difficult to rid the nation of a president who committed a felony, whether by impeachment or resignation.
Oh, and it’s also a big deal because this means that Michael Cohen likely faces serious prison time, like well over five years (perhaps very well over), and is perhaps the only person who can raise his hand during a meeting with people from Mueller’s team and say; “I know exactly what you’re looking for, I can tell you all about it. I can testify about it. I can show you the documents you’ll need. I can tell you about some folks you don’t even know about that have direct information. But, I want complete immunity.”
About the only way someone could get complete immunity for crimes as serious as those facing Cohen is to deliver the damning evidence on a president. He would have to make a significant offer of proof (prosecutors will not offer immunity until they have serious indications that you can deliver what he promises.
Perhaps it is not only FBI agents that know Trump is in serious trouble? After all, we heard recently that Trump rants about the Cohen raid/affair 20 times a day.
