As Democrats’ hopes of impeaching President Donald Trump fade, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) is still confident that President Donald Trump will go to jail.
Schiff told CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday that Trump can still be indicted on campaign finance charges once he leaves office, according to Mediaite. Citing Robert Mueller’s claim that indicting Trump was “not an option,” the California Democrat claimed that Trump is an “unindicted co-conspirator” in the hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels.
“In my point of view, he should be indicted. It’s the view of the Justice Department in that indictment that Donald Trump coordinated the legal scheme. He’s not above the law,” Schiff said.
But if Trump committed crimes, why won’t Schiff, or Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), impeach him? Such logic has never troubled Schiff, who has repeatedly accused Trump of criminal collusion even after Robert Mueller cleared Trump of that charge. Schiff apparently still believes Trump should be indicted — but, for some strange reason, he’s reluctant to do something about it.
Schiff: Trump can still be indicted
With Russian collusion now a fading memory, Schiff appeared on CBS on Sunday to discuss the latest ephemeral anti-Trump media talking point. In the latest blow to the anti-Trump left, prosecutors closed out the investigation into the Stormy Daniels hush-money scheme last week without bringing additional charges.
The media immediately cried foul, pointing to unsealed search warrants for the raids on ex-Trump lawyer Michael Cohen’s home and office, which apparently showed that Trump and former communications director Hope Hicks were involved in the hush-money scheme.
Trump’s defenders have long said that the campaign finance allegations are contrived and that the president did not break the law, even if he did, as alleged, direct Cohen to make the hush-money payments. CBS’s Margaret Brennan asked Schiff whether his prediction a year before that Trump would be indicted was wrong, but the terminally fact-challenged Democrat claimed that the lack of charges is not proof of innocence after Mueller said, in May, that a sitting president cannot be charged with a crime.
“It’s been clear from Bob Mueller that he felt and the Justice Department feels bound by the office of legal counsel opinion you can’t indict a sitting president. [Trump] is essentially an un-indicted co-conspirator,” Schiff said.
Schiff desperately projected that the Justice Department will reopen the case once Trump leaves office “provided that the statute of limitations has not run, and the Justice Department will have to weigh whether to indict the former president.”
“And why should Michael Cohen go to jail but the guy who did the direction and the coordination himself evade justice?” Schiff continued. “He is not above the law. He may have a temporary reprieve while he occupies that office, but I think the Justice Department will have to seriously consider reopening the case if that’s what it requires and indicting him when he leaves office.”
Cohen pleaded guilty to campaign finance charges last August and, in highly publicized — but ultimately inconsequential — testimony in February, implicated Trump in the hush-money “scheme.” The former Trump lawyer started a three-year prison sentence in May.
Schiff desperately backslides
Schiff will get a chance to grill Mueller himself on Wednesday, and the special counsel’s testimony may be the Democrats’ last chance to whip up impeachment fervor. After Mueller’s press conference closing out the probe in May — during which Mueller said that would be all he had to say on the matter — a spurt of impeachment momentum fizzled out.
Indeed, the Mueller hoax seems to be on its way out, soon to join a graveyard of media scandals, including the long-moribund Stormy Daniels soap opera, which seems to have finally expired after last week’s news. That story turned out much differently than Democrats probably imagined, with Michael Avenatti — who once bragged about the president’s downfall and imprisonment, according to Breitbart — facing hefty federal charges himself.
Asked by Brennan what the purpose was of hauling Mueller to testify before Congress, Schiff said that most Americans (like himself and his fellow Democrats) haven’t actually read the “dry” report, and that he hopes Mueller can bring the more than 400-page arcane text “to life” for the American people. The report lays out a “damning” set of facts, he said — facts so damning, apparently, that Schiff and Pelosi still won’t impeach the president.
Like Pelosi, Schiff talks a big game, but his reluctance to do anything about Trump’s “conspiracy” shows that not even he thinks there’s a “there” there.”
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