Former federal prosecutor Seth Waxman (left, via screengrab) and special counsel Robert Mueller (right, via Creative Commons).
Former federal prosecutor Seth Waxman in a Friday appearance on CNN slammed President Donald Trump for insisting repeatedly that "collusion isn't a crime", and said that if the president or his associates engaged in bribery, they could face RICO charges that could be used to flip his most senior advisors.
"We've been listening to the president for months since the inception of the investigation jumping up and down, and his lawyers screaming 'collusion is not a crime, it's nowhere in the federal code.' I'm here to say that's flatly not true," Waxman said. "The federal code in the bribery statutes, 18 United States Code section 201 expressly makes collusion a crime."
Waxman said that if Trump or his associates accepted anything of value from Russia -including "dirt on Hillary Clinton"- in exchange for help on the campaign, they could be facing a 15-year stay in prison.
"When there's a bribery charge, there can be even more serious offenses, things called honest services fraud which is a 20-year offense, and the most powerful weapon a federal prosecutor can use, RICO, the racketeering act," he added. "Those are the kind of charges that are used to flip senior members of a conspiracy or a criminal enterprise."
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