Bombshell pardon selling allegations could lead to charges for Giuliani: legal expert
A legal expert said Tuesday that the Department of Justice is likely interested in new allegations that Rudy Giuliani had offered to sell pardons while he was working in Donald Trump's administration
A recent lawsuit against Rudy Giuliani alleges that the former New York City mayor was attempting to sell pardons for $2 million.
Speaking to MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace, former FBI general counsel Andrew Weissmann explained that the Southern District of New York might be looking at the allegations. The allegations raise questions about any other possible illegal activity by Trump administration officials because the process wasn't a public or transparent one.
Weissmann argued that there are possible charges for the act of selling a pardon.
"If Rudy Giuliani was not really intending to do this but just wanted the money, that also would be a form of mail and wire fraud," Weissmann explained. "I do want to say with respect to these allegations, and by the way, there are allegations of tax fraud, there are allegations that Rudy Giuliani knew that the election was not stolen but was going to falsely claim that. All of those could get him into lots of hot water, but it is useful to remember this is just a civil complaint. There may be tape recordings. There may be e-mails, according to the complaint, that corroborated. But we don't know that yet."
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Regardless, it's something the DOJ would likely be looking into, he said.
One piece of Robert Mueller's final report said that Michael Cohen discussed pardons with Trump's personal lawyer, saying Cohen "would be taken care of." The lawyer later denied it. The implication was that if Cohen protected Trump, he would get a pardon. Cohen began cooperating with the government, and Trump called him a "rat" and attacked his family, saying they had been criminals.
The promise was more overt with Manafort when Trump said that the former campaign chair was being treated unfairly and he might be pardoned.
"What effect does it have on a criminal investigation that is ongoing or at trial, which is when I think this happened, for a president to dangle a pardon?" Wallace asked Weissmann.
Both selling and dangling pardons are bad and can be illegal, he said, but for prosecutors trying to flip a witness, the threat of jail time is the only real option.
"You sit down and with that person and their lawyer, and you say, this is the moment for you to make a decision," Weissmann explained. "Do you want to be with Team United States or do you want to be a defendant? Well, if the person knows that they are going to or could get a pardon from the president, it makes it a whole lot harder to cooperate and to get that person to cooperate. Because they think, you know what, I have a get out of jail free card. In fact, that is exactly what Donald Trump did with Michael Flynn, with Roger Stone, with Paul Manafort, and a litany of people. This wasn't the usual abuse of the pardon power, which we saw Bill Clinton engage in. This was pardoning people who actually had an interest in what evidence they might be able to give with respect to the former president."
He noted that it was fundamentally one of many forms of obstruction of justice involved in the Mueller probe by interfering with the investigation. To date, Attorney General Merrick Garland has not acted on any of the ten obstructions in the Mueller report.
Wallace went on to play a clip of Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to chief of staff Mark Meadows. When she testified to Congress, she recalled a number of Republican officials asking for pardons before Trump left office. She also said that Giuliani was also interested in a pardon.
Wallace observed that there should be a book on pardons in the Trump White House because so much of it has been intertwined.
See the clip of the conversation below or at the link here.
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