The Mueller investigation has sprouted. Therein lies the jeopardy for Trump.
If the old Watergate expression is “It’s not the crime; it’s the coverup,” then today’s equivalent might be “It’s not the crime; it’s the crime’s offspring.”
Federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York served a sweeping subpoena on President Trump’s inaugural committee on Monday. Nothing could more clearly illustrate the breadth of the president’s legal exposure and the limits of his nearly two-year strategy to attack and undermine special counsel Robert S. Mueller III — because the special counsel’s work is merely the sturdy root of a veritable Mueller family tree. What began as an FBI counterintelligence investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election has sprouted into multiple investigations in multiple jurisdictions examining multiple possible crimes. The case against the president’s personal lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen is the direct line, the first child. The investigation of the inaugural committee, which sprang from the Cohen case, is the grandchild. And on it goes.
The president no longer faces jeopardy from just one federal criminal probe, but at least three, and not just one prosecutor’s office, but the full resources of the entire Justice Department. In his State of the Union address on Tuesday, Trump asserted that “ridiculous partisan investigations” threatened the “economic miracle” that was happening on his watch. The threat of the investigations, however you characterize them, is to the president himself.
Prosecutors looking into illegality in one area of the president’s life have discovered evidence of potential crimes in other areas. Mueller’s discovery of wrongdoing by Cohen led to a referral to prosecutors in Manhattan, who secured a guilty plea from Cohen for violating campaign finance laws and alleged in court papers that it was Trump who directed Cohen to break the law. That investigation in turn produced evidence of wrongdoing at the Trump inaugural committee, which has led to an investigation of a Trump donor, a Los Angeles venture capitalist with ties to Qatar.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/02/07/mueller-investigation-has-sprouted-therein-lies-jeopardy-trump/
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