dangled pardons in front of people and that constitutes tampering with witnesses and bribery. think what prosecutors do every day. they literally bribe witnesses by their freedom, sometimes their life and their money. in fact, 15 years ago a court of appeals had the courage to say look, the bribery statute says anyone who offers anything of value to a witness and therefore when the government offers less time in prison to a witness in order to get their testimony, that constitutes bribery. of course it was reversed later by a higher court but the disproportionality between the power of prosecutors and defense attorneys to influence the testimony of witnesses by offering them enormous amounts of valuable assets, life, liberty, money, whereas if the defense even suggests for a moment a benefit from
that we could be seeing more of like an organized crime charge here. when you look at all the different payments in totality. so, i think that could be sort of a more likely candidate for a federal charge here. okay. that s interesting. but i want to get to the daily beast reports which says at&t met with other allies for intel on the trump white house. is any of this illegal on any front at all or is this just viewed a little bit on the shado side or all above and beyond the norm? well, you know, i think that reporting, again, goes to mitigate any sort of potential criminal liability on the part of at&t because it shows they were really casting a wide net. that s not to say that, again, alex, it is certainly unseemly but it has been going on in this country for years. that bribery statute. what has to be the case. what federal prosecutors has to show is there a direct connection, a direct link to that money and an official act like choosing not to block the
trump organization. michael, a lot of people don t know this about you, but you have done a ton of legal practice about money laundering. i want your take on this. i hadn t heard this before, which hurts my feelings as a reporter. i asked jackie speier do you think these transactions are in any way connected to what we saw as interference? she says yes. she s trying to develop that rationale. and then i ask whether or not this was only because of what they heard from glenn simpson, right? you can read the transcript of his testimony from the house and to the senate. she said no. there is a lot of open source documentation. he s not the first one to bring it to the panel. so what s your take? so let s put aside the foreign corrupt practices act because that s a little bit different. that s a bribery statute. in the money laundering sphere, the statute she s referencing makes it a crime to engage in a financial
eve party. your response? the point here is in order to even get invited to this party you need to shell out hundreds of thousands of dollars to join president trump s private club. not just $600 we re talking about. and people who pay president trump for membership in his clubs get access to the president, whether it s on new year s or at the golf course or anywhere else. and that s not the way it ought to be. he is the president of the united states. he s there to represent all of the people. and have that type of preferential access for those that pay him is morally unacceptable, even if it does not violate the bribery statute as it s interpreted by the supreme court. you re the vice chair of the ethics group which filed a complaint on commerce secretary
their former juror colleague said about them and to be tempted to respond and react. that s almost a recipe for a mistrial in itself. bret: it was a tough case for the government anyway. after the u.s. supreme court decision on the mcdonnell case. the virginia governor. bob mcdonnell was convicted. it was upheld by the supreme court. this supreme court unanimously reversed it and said the way the bribery statute is written, you cannot prosecute somebody who does favors, receives favors from political friends were doing their job that they would be doing anyway. there really has to be a quid pro quo. you want me to do this, you will pay me. not i m going to do my job and you can pay for my daughter s wedding. without that quid pro quo, the actual agreement of this for that, there s no bribery. the judge felt this did not apply here and he allowed the entire case to go to the jury. most of us who watch these