Constitutional lawyer and top ranked talk show host Mark Levin has sharply criticized the plea deal between former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen and prosecutors in New York, calling it a “sleazy political and PR attack” on behalf of special prosecutor Robert Mueller.
Levin, using his popular Facebook platform, also said that the rule barring indicting presidents dates back to 1973 and cannot be ignored or defied by the Justice Department.
In a new posting titled “A Time For Truth,” Levin, a former Justice Department chief of staff in the Reagan administration, wrote, “A sitting president CANNOT be indicted. That’s official DOJ policy since 1973. Neither the Special Counsel nor the [Southern District of New York] nor Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein can defy that 45-year-old policy.”
New documents released in the Cohen deal have been seized upon by critics of President Trump as a sign he is in deep legal trouble and could be indicted or impeached. At issue are hush payments Cohen made to two women who claimed they had affairs with the president.
Critics immediately suggested that those payments may have violated campaign finance laws.
Trump called them in a tweet a private transaction and not a violation of laws. “So now the Dems go to a simple private transaction, wrongly call it a campaign contribution, which it was not…” he wrote.
“Democrats can’t find a Smocking Gun tying the Trump campaign to Russia after James Comey’s testimony. No Smocking Gun…No Collusion.” @FoxNews That’s because there was NO COLLUSION. So now the Dems go to a simple private transaction, wrongly call it a campaign contribution,…
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 10, 2018
Levin said that Trump is correct.
“These private payments can be made in any manner or any amount. Again, they’re private payments involving private matters. To underscore, there’s no reporting requirement because they’re not campaign payments made with or without campaign funds,” he wrote.
….which it was not (but even if it was, it is only a CIVIL CASE, like Obama’s – but it was done correctly by a lawyer and there would not even be a fine. Lawyer’s liability if he made a mistake, not me). Cohen just trying to get his sentence reduced. WITCH HUNT!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 10, 2018
Levin then turned to the prosecutors in the Southern District of New York and slammed them.
“SDNY inclusion of these charges in the Cohen plea deal was a sleazy political and PR attack against the president by an office coordinating with Mueller and aligned with Comey. SDNY knew Cohen would plead. It therefore knew its absurd allegations would not be tested in any courtroom — district, circuit or Supreme Court. If they were tested, SDNY would be hammered like a nail. But it knew the left-wing media and politicians would use the mere over-the-top allegations from its office, with absolutely nothing more, to claim the president committed campaign felonies. No due process. No assumption of innocence. They knew they couldn’t charge a sitting president,” he wrote.
And on the escalating calls for impeachment, he added: “As for impeachment, [nondisclosure agreements] involving wholly private matters occurring before the president was even a candidate and completely unrelated to his office cannot legitimately trigger the Constitution’s impeachment clause. Indeed, they could not be more irrelevant. The history of the clause and its ‘high crimes and misdemeanors language make it crystal clear that the office and the president’s duties are not affected in any conceivable way by these earlier private contracts.”
