Donald Trump appears to have stepped into yet another crime by using the White House bully pulpit to threaten witnesses and their family members.
In an appearance on Fox News, the president called Michael Cohen weak and attacked his father-in-law.
“[Cohen] should give information maybe on his father-in-law, because that’s the one that people want to look at,” Trump said. “That’s the money in the family.”
During an interview with MSNBC’s Ari Melber on Thursday, Cohen’s legal advisor Lanny Davis slammed the president and called for an immediate criminal investigation into the threats made against his client and family members.
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Davis called Trump’s threats “the very definition of intimidation and witness tampering, especially a witness about to appear before a congressional committee to tell the truth about what he knows about Donald Trump.”
“By definition that deserves a criminal investigation,” he added.
Video:
Michael Cohen’s lawyer wants a criminal investigation into Trump’s witness tampering. #ctl #p2 pic.twitter.com/qoAXLrl2Qg
— PoliticusUSA (@politicususa) January 18, 2019
Davis said:
[Cohen] is very concerned, as is his family, that a bully in the bully pulpit named Donald Trump calls out a member of his family and he’s also called out other members of his family using the White House platform on a national television show. Let me be very clear here. This is a definition of witness tampering and intimidation and could be obstruction of justice. But more than that, if there is one thing at a time of this shutdown and the worst polarization in my lifetime in this country, if there is one thing that can bring Trump voters and anti-Trump voters, Democrats and Republicans together, it is to draw the line that family is out of bounds. I want to hear Republicans say that to President Trump. Tonight, tomorrow — family is out of bounds. You’ve gone too far. And I’m challenging them to do that. … There is no question that his threatening and calling out his father in law who, quote, has all of the money, is not only improper and unseemly for a bully using the bully pulpit of the presidency, but the very definition of intimidation and witness tampering, especially a witness about to appear before a congressional committee to tell the truth about what he knows about Donald Trump. By definition that deserves a criminal investigation.
As Jason Easley pointed out a short time ago, witness tampering could potentially result in decades of jail time for Trump.
Michael Cohen is set to testify on Feb. 7
With Michael Cohen set to sing like a bird before the House Oversight Committee on Feb. 7, Donald Trump is becoming increasingly panicked. His bullying comments on Fox News reek of desperation.
As Paul Waldman of The Washington Post wrote on Thursday, “[I]f [Cohen] really gives a comprehensive account of everything he saw and did while toiling as Donald Trump’s factotum, he could be to the Trump administration what John Dean was to the Nixon administration.”
Waldman added, “Cohen could peel away the layers of deception and denial to expose the rancid corruption boiling underneath.”
The walls are closing in on Trump. In his desperate attempt to get out from under the legal avalanche about to pummel him, he may have stepped into yet another crime.
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Sean Colarossi currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was an organizing fellow for both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also worked with Planned Parenthood as an Affordable Care Act Outreach Organizer in 2014, helping northeast Ohio residents obtain health insurance coverage.
