A New York-based defense attorney tried to use President Trump’s argument against so-called “flippers” during the conclusion of a trial Thursday, hours after the president suggested that cooperating with investigators in exchange for immunity or sentencing leniency “ought to be illegal.”
The attorney, Klafahni Nkrumah, invoked the president’s comments in his closing argument last week in a drug case that involved someone who agreed to testify against Nkrumah’s client. U.S. District Judge Gregory H. Woods immediately intervened, accusing Nkrumah of being “out of line.”
“I am not going to permit you to argue here regarding statements made by the president of the United States in a case that has nothing to do with this one,” Woods told Nkrumah and prosecutors, the Associated Press reported Tuesday.
The episode occurred the same day Trump told Fox News in an interview that he opposed the practice of allowing people to cooperate with federal investigators to avoid lengthy jail sentences, after his longtime personal attorney Michael Cohen agreed to do just days before the interview aired.
“If somebody defrauded a bank and he is going to get 10 years in jail or 20 years in jail, but you can say something bad about Donald Trump and you will go down to two years or three years, which is the deal [Cohen] made, in all fairness to him, most people are going to do that,” the president said. “I have had many friends involved in this stuff. It’s called flipping and it almost ought to be illegal.”
Cohen pleaded guilty last Tuesday to eight counts of tax evasion, bank fraud, and campaign finance violations. Though Cohen’s plea agreement excluded any mention of cooperation with special counsel Robert Mueller, his lawyer Lanny Davis has since said he is willing to provide information as needed.
Nkrumah cited the developments surrounding Cohen and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who was convicted on eight felony counts the same day Cohen entered a plea agreement, in his final remarks to jurors last week.
“You know what’s funny? Yesterday, Manafort was convicted,” he said, later claiming that Trump’s comments were relevant “because it is concerning cooperators and people’s opinions of cooperators.”
Public comments and tweets by the president have previously been used by attorneys to argue against policies of his administration, including the travel ban from Muslim-majority countries that Trump issued days after taking office.
