President Trump on Thursday suggested that the practice of cooperating with prosecutors as part of a plea agreement “ought to be illegal” after his former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, said in a guilty plea that he violated campaign finance laws at Trump’s direction.
Trump told “Fox & Friends” host Ainsley Earhardt that Cohen was able to secure a better deal because he used Trump’s name. The president suggested in a tweet on Wednesday that Cohen lied to get such a deal.
“If somebody defrauded a bank and he’s gonna get 10 years in jail, or 20 years in jail, but you can say something bad about Donald Trump and you’ll go down to two years or three years, which is the deal he made, in all fairness to him most people are going to do that,” Trump said on “Fox & Friends.”
“It’s called flipping, and it almost ought to be illegal,” he added.
Trump: Flipping should be illegal pic.twitter.com/qVFsOWHbkv
— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) August 23, 2018
Trump suggested that individuals who flip aren’t being truthful, telling Earhardt that they “make up stories” and “just make up lies.”
“I’ve seen it many times,” Trump said, without providing examples. “They make up things and now they go from 10 years to they’re a national hero.”
Legal experts have noted in the aftermath of Cohen’s guilty plea that prosecutors would not have accepted his plea if they believed he was not being truthful.
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- Discussion
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Trump says "flipping" to cooperate with prosecutors "ought to be illegal" after Cohen takes plea deal https://t.co/IUC3R21H8m pic.twitter.com/iYt2se5RMk
— The Hill (@thehill) August 23, 2018
Ex-GOP Intel chairman tears into Trump for saying "flipping" to help prosecutors should be illegal https://t.co/oJmCEZzRrj pic.twitter.com/yFgNENl5LE
— The Hill (@thehill) August 23, 2018
Former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) on Thursday rejected President Trump’s suggestion that “flipping” to cooperate with prosecutors should be illegal, calling the practice a “cornerstone of our justice system.”
Rogers, a national security commentator on CNN, said individuals like former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen tend to cooperate with investigators once they are “facing the full weight of the responsibility of their criminal actions.”
“They’re gonna start thinking, ‘Hey, I’m not going to go to jail for 60 or 70 years,'” Rogers said on CNN.
“It’s the cornerstone of our justice system,” he added. “To say that that should be illegal, that’s fundamentally not understanding how justice is brought about here in the United States.”
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Desperation.
Flipping – a highly unpopular practice among those commonly referred to as “mob bosses” https://t.co/Bdxuyaiaa9
— Stephanie Ruhle (@SRuhle) August 23, 2018
Uhhhhhhh.
Does anyone else feel like this interview is Trump's Nixonian "I am not a crook" moment? https://t.co/S5zpAUSZ94
— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) August 23, 2018
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