Former federal prosecutor says Southern District of New York may be waiting to indict Trump when he's out of office
Former federal prosecutor Glen Kirschner explained why the Southern District of New York might be holding back on the campaign finance charges against Michael Cohen.
President Donald Trump signed multiple hush-money payments as president of the United States.
Kirschner said that he reread Judge William Pauley's orders from Wednesday to understand what the Southern District of New York prosecutors said about the documents being sealed or not.
Pauley said that the "government represents that it has concluded aspects of the investigation that justified the continued sealing of the portions of the materials related to Cohen's campaign finance violations."
He explained that most people are reading that and saying that the investigation is concluded so there won't be further charges brought. But that may not be the case.
"I think we need to pull those two things apart," he continued. "Mind you, I’m not saying this is an indication that there will be charges brought but here’s what I can tell you, Nicolle, when prosecutors look at a case that potentially involves multiple conspirators, we have one overarching goal: We want to try to bring a case that charges all of those conspirators in one case to be tried in one trial. Why? Because you don’t want to break it up, try two, three co-conspirators while the others wait in the wings and get a complete preview of your case and your evidence during the first trial."
It's already known that Michael Cohen is guilty of campaign finance violations at the urging, assistance and benefit of the president, he went on.
"We have some indication there may be exposure by Don Jr. and Allen Weisselberg on the money side and check-writing side," he continued. "Let me hypothetically pose, if there’s a conspiracy with all four of these people and we know the Southern District cannot charge the president right now because the office of legal counsel memo says you can’t indict a sitting president, then it could be the Southern District of New York has an interest in bringing one unified conspiracy case against all four possible co-conspirators the day President Trump leaves office."
He clarified he's not sure if that would happen or will happen, but it could be what the prosecutors, in this case, are doing here.
Watch his take below: