Jonathon Turley, law professor and occasional Trump apologist, stated on Morning Joe that Michael Cohen brings Trump within one witness of total legal jeopardy and destruction. Turley described the danger to Trump represented by last week’s leak that Cohen is willing to testify that Trump knew of the meeting ahead of time, and he didn’t mince his words:
“I think the current development is very serious. He’s one witness away from a potential catastrophe. If any of those five witnesses breaks and supports Michael Cohen, this will get real bad, real fast….
“It’s not that the meeting will establish a crime of collusion, even if what Cohen is saying is true, but what it would mean is that Donald Trump Jr. would be in serious jeopardy of a criminal charge,” he said. “If Mueller was to go after Donald Trump Jr., I think we would see a very rapid chain of events and it would not end well for anyone.”
Turley is still annoyingly Turley in that I think he is wrong in his summation about establishing guilt with respect to “collusion.” I will be the first to admit that I am not the legal scholar and professor that Turley is, yet Turley skips over the importance of Mueller having established the predicate conspiracy – Russian meddling into the election, and what actions could constitute knowingly joining and furthering that conspiracy. Once Mueller establishes the underlying crime by the Russians; conspiracy to defraud the United States of a fair and free election, then any knowing act in furtherance of goal, which in this case could be proven through Cohen alone, does, in fact, establish joining that conspiracy as a full participant.
Regardless, for our purposes today, what Turley says is true in that the heat has been turned up on Trump considerably. It puts the Trump family front and center into the prison equation and forces Trump to have to consider whether he will watch his son(s) and daughter (at some point Princess Ivanka is going to have to answer some questions about what she knew and when) face the prospect of a federal prison, or really stretch his dictator’s wings, and begin mass firings, and/or pardons.
To be fair, Turley does bring up the possibility of “Nixonian” Saturday Night Massacres and other drastic measures, acts that will put real heat on other Republicans to turn on Trump:
Follow me on Twitter, we have had an incredible weekend: @MiciakZoom.
The Orange Treasonous Terrorist is also a tweet away from locked up.