Trump’s Role In Crafting A Misleading Statement For His Son Could Spell More Legal Trouble For The White House

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Publish Date:
August 1, 2017
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Business Insider
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Summary

President Donald Trump personally “dictated” a misleading statement about his son Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting with a Russian lawyer last year, The Washington Post reported Monday, a move experts say could put the White House at fresh legal risk.

The White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, told reporters on Tuesday that “the president weighed in as any father would based on the limited information he had.”

“If the reports are accurate, Trump didn’t just help write a false statement for his son to release — he also then allowed his personal lawyer to falsely deny that Trump was involved in the drafting of the statement,” said David Sklansky, a professor of criminal law at Stanford Law School.

Sklansky said that lying, generally, isn’t criminal, so the episode is unlikely to constitute the “act” of obstruction of justice under federal criminal law.

“But both could be relevant to whether other things Trump has done” — like firing James Comey as FBI director — “were done with corrupt intent,” Sklansky said. CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin said Monday that the episode would most likely signal “consciousness of guilt” to federal and congressional investigators.

The political implications may be the most relevant given the debate surrounding whether a sitting president could be criminally indicted. As Sklansky said, “in an impeachment proceeding, Congress would be the sole judge of whether any lies by the president themselves constituted ‘high crimes or misdemeanors.”’

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