According to his former fixer/attorney, Michael Cohen, former President Donald Trump could “relatively soon” be facing a criminal indictment.
During a Wednesday interview with Joy Reid on MSNBC, Cohen, Trump’s personal lawyer for over a decade, predicted that the Department of Justice would soon indict his former boss over classified documents that the FBI retrieved from his Mar-a-Lago resort home during their August 8 raid of the property, and added that Trump could also be forced into a congressional testimony.
Cohen noted that the FBI’s discovery of empty folders marked “top secret” during the raid would likely be a a central topic during any proceedings against Trump:
“If the adage that no one is above the law holds true, then Donald should have been indicted already and facing consequences. I think that there’s going to be an indictment and relatively soon. I believe there will also be congressional hearings with Donald in the hot seat where, you know, either he’ll come in willingly—which I don’t think he will—or via subpoena.”
“Donald Trump Rally 10/21/16” by Michael Candelori Photography is licensed with CC BY 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/
He continued:
“The real questions that they have to be asking right now is, you know, where are the documents that were in the empty top secret files that were found at Mar-a-Lago? I mean, that’s really the big question. And who did Donald give them to or show them to? … Donald is a clear and present danger to the national security and safety of this country and if this doesn’t prove it, I’m not sure that anything will.”
Following his own indictment in 2018, Cohen has become one of Trump’s loudest critics. He was famously sentenced to home confinement for three years after he pleaded guilty to lying to congress, federal tax crimes, and violations of campaign finance laws.
Cohen also told Reid that Trump likely kept documents containing nuclear secrets at Mar-a-Lago so he could use them for “extortion” in the event that he was indicted on criminal charges.
Trump at Mar-a-Lago via Flickr / Trump White House Archives, Public Domain
He also criticized the DOJ for being soft on Trump so far:
“The DOJ, they’re tiptoeing around Donald as if he was the king, the supreme leader, or a monarch.”
