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Could be tried in front of a jury. it s got plenty of potential problems you know why didn t you just go to law enforcement like david letterman did when he was extorted? why didn t you why did you have to lie to the fbi about it? but you know an extortion defense certainly is possible here. jeff do you expect former speaker hastert to do any jailtime if found guilty? you know i think a lot of that depends on whether he goes to trial or not. i think if he cuts a deal if there s a plea bargain, i think it s extremely unlikely that he will do jailtime but if he does go to trial and if this turns into an ugly, long, drawn out fight, where the justice department you know has to throw everything it has at him and all of this dirty laundry gets aired, i do think he could do some jailtime. jeff lastly is it illegal to pay somebody hush money? if speaker hastert hadn t allegedly lied to investigators ....
And hadn t tried to hide the money being withdrawn, would it have been legal to just have given $3.5 million to this former student and that would have been fine? based on what i know now i think it would have been perfect perfectly legal. we can give money to anyone we want basically for almost any reason. there might be some gift tax implications but that s not a criminal matter. the charge here exclusively relates to the currency transaction reports. the structuring of the money, and and the lying to the fbi. if he had simply written a check to this person and that was the end of it i think i don t think there s any possibility we would be here in a criminal matter at all. jeffrey toobin thank you so much. coming up the rain refusing to let up in texas. highways turned into lakes. rivers overflowing their banks and expected to get worse over ....