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| President Donald Trump called for ex-lawyer Michael Cohen to receive a long prison sentence for his admitted crimes. Trump also accused special counsel Robert Mueller of seeking "lies" from witnesses. |
Trump's mounting troubles |
| By Gabe Lezra and Conor Shaw |
| The report that the Trump organization might have offered Russian President Vladimir Putin a $50 million penthouse apartment in a Moscow development that was under negotiation adds to President Donald Trump's mounting legal troubles and represents a potential national security vulnerability. |
| The president was already facing questions of whether he obstructed justice, whether his campaign colluded with Russia in the 2016 election, and whether he violated campaign-finance laws by arranging payments to two women who claimed they had an affair with him. |
| Now, Trump will also face the question of whether he or his business violated a 41-year-old law called the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), which makes it a crime to corruptly offer anything of value to a government official for the purpose of "obtaining or retaining business." |
| Talker: Was it right to use tear gas on border-rushing migrants? |
| Offering a $50 million apartment to the president of a hostile adversary in order to secure regulatory approval and financing for a real estate transaction is a textbook FCPA violation. If Trump or his adult children were aware of the offer, they could also be exposed to significant criminal liability because they stood to benefit from it. |
| Under the FCPA, there does not have to be an actual transfer of something of value — or even a formal offer. The law was written with backroom "wink-and-a-nod" agreements in mind, so even if Trump's ex-personal lawyer Michael Cohen only floated the idea that Putin might be given an apartment when he reportedly spoke to a representative of Putin's press secretary (without making a formal offer), that conduct could still amount to a violation. |
| The report also holds significance for the collusion case. Cohen's previously unreported contacts with aides to Putin in May and June of 2016 represent yet another potential channel of communication between Trump and Putin. Those contacts occurred during the same period that the Russian government was trying to hack the computer networks and email accounts of the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. They also occurred close to the now infamous June 2016 meeting of Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort with Russians who were promising dirt on Hillary Clinton. |
| Finally, if Trump or his business had in fact promised Putin the penthouse, in violation of the FCPA, those contacts amounted to compromising information that Putin could have held over then-candidate Trump. It potentially explains why Trump has been reluctant to criticize Putin in public statements. For instance, Trump caused understandable alarm when he sided with Putin over the conclusions of U.S. intelligence agencies at a news conference in Helsinki this summer. |
| That's the real kicker: a potentially compromised president is not just a criminal law conundrum; it's a national security nightmare. |
| Gabe Lezra and Conor Shaw serve as counsel at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). You can follow them on Twitter: @ElEzrah and @ConorMarcusShaw. |
 | | The cartoonist's homepage, courier-journal.com/opinion | | Marc Murphy/The (Louisville, Ky.) Courier Journal/USA TODAY Network | |
What our readers are saying |
| I can't seem to find a Trump Tower development in Russia, that's funny. It's kind of like how we still haven't seen damning evidence of President Donald Trump colluding with Russia. |
| — Richard Berg |
| Where is the evidence this led to the tampering of votes? Where is the evidence of a meeting asking Russian President Vladimir Putin to hack the Democratic National Committee servers? |
| Trump was a private citizen when supposed deals with Russia were going on, and the Trump Tower hotel deal never happened. Special counsel Robert Mueller's entire goal seems to be to stretch his investigation out to politically damage Trump. |
| — Robert Rogers |
| Trump and his family were only campaigning in 2016 for the money, never imagining he would actually win. The lies he has always used in the business world weren't highlighted under the spotlight of the news media as much as a president's are. |
| — Gerald Burns |
| The problems with mounting a conspiracy case against Trump? These cases are extremely hard to prove. It is nothing more than speculation. |
| The Mueller investigation is indeed a witch hunt, and those who have sold the farm in relish that it will turn out something for them will be sorely disappointed. |
| — Keith Smith |
What others are saying |
| Quinta Jurecic, The New York Times : "The allure of a Mueller report lies in its imagined promise of a single, definitive truth capable of cutting through the haze of lies, confusion and 'alternative facts.' But Jerome Corsi's and George Papadopoulos' antics are a warning that this hope will inevitably fall short. Conspiracy theorists and prosecutors live in different worlds: The first, unmoored from truth; the second, devoted to proving facts beyond a reasonable doubt. ... Rather than crumbling, though, their falsehoods have continued to spread and grow. ... In this environment, the question is less what special counsel Robert Mueller will do next and more what Congress and the American people will do with the information they already have." |
| Josh Campbell, CNN.com : "Fortunately for our institutions of justice, each new exposed lie is further evidence that those in the Justice Department are not corrupt; they are simply doing their jobs and following the facts wherever they lead. If the Trump associates that Mueller has continued to knock down were indeed innocent, the president might be spending his time presenting facts to prove the case rather than attacking Mueller and the investigation. And we all know that when you're attacking investigators, you're losing." |
| Peter Zeidenberg, USA TODAY : "The bottom line is that Trump's impulsivity is intractable. The fact that something is unwise is not a deterrent for him, particularly when he is egged on by the right-wing media appealing to his sense of victimhood. Congress should step up to publicly and loudly support Mueller, insist that the special counsel be permitted to complete his investigation, and make clear that any interference could lead directly to impeachment." |
| To join the conversations about topics on USA TODAY or provide feedback to this newsletter, email jrivera@usatoday.com, comment on Facebook, or use #tellusatoday on Twitter. |
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