Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough praised Fox News legal analyst Andrew Napolitano on Friday for laying out the case against President Donald Trump and observed that Trump could be held accountable for more than just a couple felonies, but also decades of fraud.
After Trump’s former lawyer and “fixer” Michael Cohen was sentenced to serve three years in prison for committing felony campaign finance crimes in concert with the National Enquirer in coordination with and the direction of Trump himself, Napolitano explained how strong of a case prosecutors have built.
“We learned that the federal prosecutors here in New York City, not Bob Mueller and his team in Washington D.C., career prosecutors have evidence that the president of the United States committed a felony by ordering and paying Michael Cohen to break the law,” he said. “How do we know that? They told that to a federal judge and under the rules, they can’t tell that to a federal judge unless they have the evidence…The felony is paying Michael Cohen to commit a felony. It’s pretty basic. You’re liable, criminally liable for the commission of that crime. That’s what the prosecutors told the federal judge.”
Napolitano also noted that most campaign finance violations, including the violations committed by the Obama campaign in 2008 that Trump has been trying to compare to his own violations, are minor clerical errors that are easy to fix. But Trump had Cohen pay illegal hush money and cover it up, which is a felony.
Scarborough played video of Napolitano’s remarks and dropped the hammer on Trump.
“Boom!” he declared. “A lot of good information right there from Fox News. First of all, Judge Napolitano lays it out clearly and perfectly. If you make a clerical error, that’s fine. You’ll pay a fine, everybody does it. But if there’s a conspiracy to hide a campaign contribution, as David Pecker and his attorney and the judge and the prosecution said yesterday there was, that’s when it becomes a felony.”
Scarborough also praised Fox anchor Chris Wallace for not buying Trump’s claim that the FBI forced Michael Flynn to lie, reminding everyone that Trump fired Flynn because he got caught lying to the FBI.
The Morning Joe panel also reminded viewers that Trump is not just in trouble because of the campaign finance felonies, but his inauguration is also under investigation and that’s on top of the ongoing Russia investigation.
Scarborough concluded that Trump’s legal team is not big enough to handle all of the legal trouble heading Trump’s way and that the president could end up being hit with 30 to 40 years of fraud charges, especially since House Democrats intend to subpoena his tax records and the state of New York continues to investigate the Trump Organization.
“You look at all of the legal challenges he has facing him, and then you look at his legal team or his lack of a legal team, my god — it would take a strong law firm of 500 lawyers in private practice to do the legal cleanup work and defense work on the 30, 40 years of possible fraud that Donald Trump has committed in his organizations over the past four decades, and he remains legally unarmed.”
Here’s the video via YouTube.
The bottom line: Trump is screwed.
Featured Image: YouTube screenshot
