President Trump may not be in the complete legal clear for campaign-related crimes, but with the submission of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report clearing Trump and his associates of conspiracy or coordination with Russia, he can certainly breathe easy tonight knowing that nothing else on the table will fairly qualify him for impeachment proceedings.
Livid liberals have already pointed towards legal proceedings at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York in the absence of a silver bullet from the Mueller camp.
Whatever is in the Mueller report, it ain’t over til the Sovereign District of New York sings.
— Brian Fallon (@brianefallon) March 22, 2019
But, while Trump faces very real crimes from the SDNY, he’s effectively emerged scot-free from impeachment territory. Trump faces legally questionable, yet personally humiliatin,g campaign finance violations from the SDNY, but the special counsel has essentially cleared him of every non-process crime he faced in the Russia investigation, leaving not one stone of campaign-era “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors” that any reasonable legal mind would consider grounds for impeachment.
It’s still worth considering what charges, existing and potential, remain against Trump for his conduct during the campaign.
The president remains in legal jeopardy for two separate payouts to silence two of his alleged former mistresses, Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal. If the SDNY memo sentencing Michael Cohen is correct, then Trump did direct his former personal attorney and fixer to issue a payment in exchange for a non-disclosure agreement to Daniels and orchestrate American Media, Inc.’s catch and kill purchase of life rights from McDougal with regards to her affair with Trump.
Whether these payments, immoral as they are on the outset, are criminal, remains to be seen.
Trump’s attorneys will likely rely on the John Edwards defense. The 2008 presidential candidate defended his campaign’s payouts to mistress Rielle Hunter by claiming he had only done so to conceal his adulterous affair from his wife, not to affect the outcome of the election. But AMI asserted that Cohen did initiate payments to impact 2016, and given that Trump tweeted about Edwards’ legal proceedings, he likely had mens rea in intentionally directing Cohen to violate federal law. This means that Trump is still in very real legal jeopardy, but all else equal, he does not face any remaining real threats of impeachment
Even as president, Trump cannot pardon anyone, including himself, of a state crime. If the SDNY finds him guilty of violating campaign finance law, he will likely have to weather the storm alone. But a campaign finance violation, even one as morally unscrupulous as paying off mistresses, certainly does not qualify as an impeachable offense. Criminal intent matters, and given his documented history of discussing the Edwards trial, Trump likely knew he was skirting the law in asking Cohen to silence Daniels and McDougal. But even an intentional campaign finance violation is probably no high crime or misdemeanor.
The question of Trump’s criminal activity always centered on whether he colluded or conspired with a foreign adversary, not whether he committed procedural crimes or illicit campaign spending. While it’s more than expected to lament Trump’s guilt of the latter, Democrats and their media allies who promised that Mueller would find Trump’s guilt of the former weren’t just engaging in wishful thinking. They were lying to you, all of you, and without an iota of evidence.
