A former Watergate special prosecutor offered insight into Donald Trump's thinking about possible plea agreements in the four criminal prosecutions he's now facing.
Jon Sale, who served as an assistant special prosecutor during the Watergate saga and later represented Rudy Giuliani during the Ukraine impeachment inquiry, told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" that Trump would likely follow the example set by his mentor Roy Cohn and reject any offers to plead guilty to lessen his punishment.
Cohn, a lawyer who served as Sen. Joseph McCarthy's chief counsel during his investigations of suspected communists in the '50s, went on to represent and mentor Trump during his early business career.
"I had the -- I'm trying to think of a better word than pleasure -- of interacting against Roy," Sale said. "I tried a case against him. It was in his interest to be nice to me. He could be charming, but when he represented Donald Trump, he did teach him the playbook. It started with – and I don't mean this to be light – Roy Cohn didn't pay anybody. Roy Cohn was known and liked in the courthouse, but a court reporter wouldn't take an order from him without a bank check or cash up front, and he got away with it."
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Cohn was charged three times for professional misconduct, including perjury and witness tampering, during his career, and Sale said the former president would remember that his mentor improbably beat the rap in each case.
"The important thing is the odds of beating a federal case are very slim – 95 percent or higher is their conviction rate," Sale said. "What are the odds of Donald Trump beating two of them? Well, I believe Chris Christie is right when he says Donald Trump is afraid to go to prison. If he's going to be booked like everyone else in Atlanta, he's going to spend hours actually locked up, and he might entertain a possible plea bargain."
"Why will he eventually turn it down?" Sale said. "Because Roy Cohn was indicted three times by the feds, and guess what? Three times not guilty."
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