Video Transcript
Speaker 1: Let’s bring in attorney Richard Roth, he’s the founder of the Roth Law Firm, and has represented celebrities and high profile cases in the past. Brad Micklin is the lead attorney for the Micklin Law Group. For the sake of this debate, let’s just assume that the evidence is there, that Donald Trump ordered these payments, that the prosecutors could conceivably indict him or bring grounds for impeachment that he violated campaign finance law. Should a campaign finance law violation though, Brad, be worthy of an impeachable offense?
Brad Micklin: Technically, yes because the impeachment talks to a misdemeanor. So this would obviously be much more serious than that, but I don’t think it’s going to ever get to that point. So I don’t even think we need to worry about it.
Speaker 3: Trump was saying today, “I never directed Michael Cohen to break the law. He was a lawyer, and he is supposed to know the law. It’s called advice of the counsel, and the lawyer has great liability if a mistake is made. That’s what they get paid for.”
Brad Micklin: Right. Exactly, I mean …
Speaker 3: Could he be right though?
Brad Micklin: He is right. I had a client even ask me the same question. We can’t lose sight of the fact that Cohen’s a criminal. He admitted he’s a criminal. So we can’t suspect that he was following the proper procedure in that Donald Trump led him to this. He’s a criminal and that’s why he committed these acts.
Speaker 1: But couldn’t Donald Trump be in even more trouble if Donald Trump is asking him to do this, and then Donald Trump could not only be hit with campaign finance violations but also a conspiracy count.
Brad Micklin: Yes. I think if there’s any overt act by then running president Trump, then you do have a serious offense. But I don’t know if we’re going to find that, and I’d be surprised that we haven’t heard or seen any. Because remember a long time ago when Cohen started releasing these tapes, nothing came out about any overt act. So I don’t see that it’s going to surface.
Speaker 3: What will come out of the mouth of Michael Cohen in these few months before he goes to jail or should the president’s concern be the National Enquirer deal?
Brad Micklin: Well, all of that is still sort of a second step though because we first have to see whether or not it was for the election, to influence the election. Other commenters are saying that Trump is a brand and he had claims like this in the past, and he would’ve had claims like this if he wasn’t running for president. So it had nothing to do with the election.
Speaker 1: Michael Cohen has apparently told Mueller’s team while Donald Trump had a real estate deal six months into 2016, after he was already clenching the nomination. If Donald Trump in his written statements about all of his activities during the campaign said under oath in this written statement, I don’t know it ended in January, then he’s got a perjury charge, right?
Brad Micklin: Maybe. It would go back to sort of what faced Clinton because, again, this whole issue with these payments, when it comes to campaign finance, no different than Obama, no different than Edwards, no different than Hillary Clinton issues.
Speaker 1: Well, it is different than Obama because Obama wasn’t directed this, and it was the Obama campaign that was correcting a clerical error, not part of a criminal scheme, which is what the judge found in this particular case.
Brad Micklin: They called it a clerical error, but it was a $1.3 million clerical error.
Speaker 1: Right. That’s why it was like one out of our 1400 donations they got, they didn’t report at the end. It’s quite different than saying to somebody, “Hey, I need you to come up with $150,000 to pay off these two women,” before the campaign.
Speaker 1: Brad Micklin, Richard Roth, thank you very much. We appreciate it. Just ahead …
