CNN
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Days before then-President Donald Trump left the White House, federal prosecutors in New York debated whether Trump could be charged with campaign finance crimes after he was out of office, CNN Senior According to the legal analyst’s new book Ellie Honig.
When prosecutors in the Southern District of New York indicted his former attorney Michael Cohen in 2018 over a hush-money scheme that pays two women who allege ties to Trump, including adult film star Stormy Daniels. However, prosecutors were considering indicting Trump at the time because of long-standing Justice Department guidance that a sitting president could not be indicted. I didn’t.
But as Trump was about to resign in January 2021, U.S. attorney Audrey Strauss held multiple meetings with a small group of prosecutors to discuss evidence against Trump. I did. They cited several factors, including the political implications and the fact that Trump’s other scandals, such as the 2020 presidential election and efforts to overturn the Jan. 6, 2021 riots, were “campaigned.” Decided not to seek indictment of Trump for reasons, Honig writes. Financial breaches seem somehow trivial and outdated by comparison. ”
A person familiar with the investigation said he was “well aware of the prudent reasons for not prosecuting the president even in his absence.”
Honig’s book, The Untouchables, explores how Trump and other powerful figures “get over it,” with the former president, which Honig took on while serving as an assistant U.S. attorney in New York from 2004. It focuses on both mob bosses. – 2012, New Jersey prosecutor. The book was acquired by CNN before its January 31st release date.
Federal prosecutors in New York have opted not to pursue the case against Trump, but Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg appears to be looking into the matter again. Cohen met with prosecutors from his office earlier this month, the first meeting in over a year and the most that the Manhattan District Attorney has focused on the Trump Organization’s involvement in hush-money payments. clear signs.
Honig writes that his account of the 2018 Cohen indictment is based on interviews with more than six people directly involved in the federal government. Cohen prosecution.
Honig said prosecutors in the Southern District of New York had prepared a draft indictment against Cohen that included “exhaustive details of Trump’s central involvement in the hush-money system.”
“Cohen’s draft indictment is a full account, running over 50 pages in one iteration. In essence, it is both Cohen’s formal indictment and Trump’s public denunciation, with no indictment attached. No,” wrote Honig. “SDNY’s draft indictment left no doubt: Trump was neither a mere bystander nor an unwitting beneficiary of campaign finance crimes. You may lose.”
But nearly all of the details about Trump have been removed from the indictment by Justice Department leaders.
Trump was finally mentioned in minimal detail Final court filings supporting the allegation He has not been charged with a crime and has therefore objected against Cohen as an “Individual-1”.
Prosecutors have given “serious internal consideration” to stronger labels, including what he called the “nuclear option,” describing Trump as “co-conspirator one,” wrote Honig.
But New York prosecutors refused to try to name Trump “Co-Conspirator 1,” and instead called Trump “Candidate 1.” However, the DOJ preferred “a little more discretion” and arrived at “Individual-1”.
Cohen admitted to paying Daniels $130,000 just before the 2016 election to stop him from going public about his alleged ties to Trump. He helped arrange a $150,000 payment to Karen McDougal, killing her story claiming a 10-month relationship with Trump. Trump has denied both incidents.
Honig writes that when a draft indictment detailing Trump’s conduct was sent to Justice Department headquarters in Washington, it was rejected by the DOJ’s principal deputy attorney general, Ed O’Callaghan.
“In the DOJ’s view, Trump-specific language was unnecessary and threatened to damage the reputation of the unindicted party,” Honig wrote. “It would be unfair to Trump and potentially damaging to the nation as a whole to effectively charge a sitting president with a crime without giving him a formal mechanism to defend himself.”
Deputy U.S. Attorney Rob Kuzami of New York countered, saying the Justice Department “couldn’t and shouldn’t withhold from the public material information about the role of a sitting president in federal felonies,” Honig wrote. There is
![Michael Cohen](https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/220818115720-michael-cohen.jpg?c=16x9&q=w_850,c_fill)
Michael Cohen and Ellie Honig join former Trump organization chief financial officer’s guilty plea
But after a series of “hot and substantive” debates, Justice Department leaders persisted, and New York prosecutors agreed, removing details about Trump from Cohen’s indictment.
In August 2018, Cohen pleaded guilty to eight criminal charges, admitted in court to his involvement with Trump, and “coordinated, at the direction of a candidate for federal office,” to run for Trump in the 2016 presidential election. He admitted to keeping information from being released that would have caused him harm. motion.
Geoffrey Berman, who was the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District from 2018 to 2020, was fired in the Cohen case, but last year in his book Holding the Line, he wrote that the DOJ had to take down certain things. wrote that he forced Cohen to rewrite his filing. This included allegations that “Individual-1 acted ‘cooperatively’ with and ‘coordinated’ with Cohen regarding illegal campaign contributions,” Berman said when Cohen himself testified in court. It said it linked the allegations to Trump.
Still, in an interview surrounding the book’s publication last September, Berman suggested that prosecutors didn’t have the evidence to file a successful lawsuit against Trump.
“When it comes to prosecution, you have to look at what is admissible evidence against a particular individual. So I looked up the evidence against Michael Cohen and it was there and he pleaded guilty, but other than that, the prosecution would be. It was not done. said on the podcast with John Stewart.
The dispute Honig describes over the Cohen case between Justice Department officials in Washington and prosecutors in the Southern District of New York is one of several instances in which the New York office has clashed with Trump’s DOJ.
In 2020, then-Attorney General William Barr fired Berman. Barr said the reason for Berman’s dismissal was simply Trump’s request, which happened while Berman’s office was conducting an investigation into Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani.
The Cohen investigation was handed over to New York prosecutors by former special counsel Robert Mueller because it did not directly address Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Prosecutors said they knew there was DOJ guidance that a sitting president could not be indicted, but conducted their own investigation to “make sure the DOJ got it right.” Honig writes. The New York team came to the same conclusion, deciding that indicting the president “under seal” would not be possible until he resigned.
“If it was someone lesser-known, we wouldn’t even turn a blind eye to prosecuting Trump,” one prosecutor said. Some felt it was more than enough to claim, while others thought it was a little near the line of such high-stakes cases, although there was plenty of evidence.
Prosecutors considered stepping up the case against Cohen and briefly considered the possibility of pursuing wiretapping of Trump advisers, Honig said. We discussed internally whether it was necessary.
According to the book, “the team understood that such wiretapping could yield evidence of conversations involving Trump himself.” No sitting or former president has ever been caught speaking in a court-ordered wiretap.”
Honig said Strauss, who was then the federal prosecutor for the Southern District, was quick to reject the proposed wiretapping, as he was aware that wiretapping could intercept a sitting president’s conversations. .
Before Cohen was indicted, SDNY prosecutors met with Trump’s attorney, Joanna Hendon, who argued that Trump should not be involved in Cohen’s prosecution, writes Kuzami. assured Hendon that his office had agreed that a sitting president could not be indicted. Hendon also opposes classifying Trump as a co-conspirator in the documents because she cannot prosecute Trump and therefore cannot use the forums to defend herself and clear his name. bottom.
This was the same rationale that Justice Department leaders later used to drop details about Trump’s involvement in Cohen’s indictment, and Honig points out that Trump was doubly protected from getting involved. are doing. As a co-conspirator because he cannot be prosecuted. ”