Two former federal prosecutors said Sunday in an op-ed piece written for The Daily Beast that there is more than enough evidence to indict President Donald Trump on numerous crimes and that were he not the sitting president, he would already be behind bars.
In their article, Mimi Rocah and Renato Mariotti note that while Attorney General William Barr has tried to minimize Trump’s illegal acts, the president can and should be charge the second he leaves office:
“Justice Department policy prohibits the prosecution of a president while in office, but nothing forbids one from being charged after leaving the White House. The Mueller Report even noted one reason to investigate the president was to preserve evidence for possible future use even though Trump can’t be charged now.”
Rocah and Mariotti then present their case against Trump, focusing on four key areas:
“(1) Trump’s efforts to fire Mueller, (2) Trump’s order to falsify evidence about that effort, (3) Trump’s efforts to limit the scope of Mueller’s investigation to exclude his conduct, and (4) Trump’s efforts to try and prevent witnesses from cooperating with investigators probing him and his campaign.”
After comparing Trump’s actions to those of a mafia don, the two then suggest that the president’s conversations with his former attorney, Michael Cohen, offer yet another prosecutable offense:
“Trump employed mob-like tactics ‘using inducements in the form of positive messages’ to get Cohen, his former attorney, not to cooperate. For example, Trump urged Cohen publicly and privately not to ‘flip,’ promising through counsel that Cohen would be protected as long as he did not go ‘rogue.'”
All of this Rocah and Mariotti conclude, proves that Trump has indeed obstructed justice and needs to be charged for that another other crimes:
“To look at these facts and say that a prosecutor could not probably sustain a conviction for obstruction of justice defies logic and our experience. But, the criminal case against Donald Trump, private citizen, would be one that any federal prosecutor—regardless of their politics—should proudly pursue. As federal prosecutors, we were taught to pursue obstruction of justice cases with zeal because if obstruction goes unchecked, our whole system of justice is at risk.”
To put it in words that even a Trump supporter could understand: LOCK HIM UP!
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