weisselberg, it wouldn t be don or eric, it would be allen weisselberg. interesting. we re trying to get to the bottom of how valuable weisselberg is to investigators. given what you know about how the trump organization works and it s a little unorthodox, it s not like a lot of corporations. some of it feels like a corporation, some of it feels like something else what s your sense of how the reimbursement to michael cohen would have worked? obviously as you say weisselberg would have been involved but would he have had to get approval from someone else? would there have been more people involved? well, there s only at this time, january and february 2017 there were only three people really who had authority over the trust that donald trump put his business into. remember, donald trump still owns his business but the administration of it is left to this trust which is run by eric, don, and allen weisselberg. so, allen weisselberg to me is not somebody who typically does thin
department of justice has this guidance about not indicting a sitting president, they re not bound in the state by those same guidelines. so, although the supreme court may ultimately decide the constitutional question, there s nothing that would prevent them from charging the president with a crime in the state system. adam, we non-lawyers have become very interested with the intricacies in the legal system and that conversation i had earlier with matt axelrod about indicting a sitting president. there s another conversation about impeachment. a lot of people don t want to have it and 40% of americans might be interested, more than half are not, democrats don t want to talk about it and no republicans do but you wrote a remarkable article about what the framers of the constitutions thought about reasons for impeachment. tell us a bit about this. i might have thought that you draw a bright line that the president should be impeached for things he does in office, for abusing the pow
acts. barbara, the legal liability faced by the president has widened and deepened substantially this week. the legal liability of the president is no longer an abstraction. you may believe it or not but it is now on the doorstep of the president. and that has meant that some people are openly talking about impeachment. let s put that aside for a second. how do you view the fact that the president now can t continue to push away the idea that nothing illegal happened around him or at his direction? yeah, illegal on so many different fronts now just in this week alone that has unfolded as adam just talked about, this conspiracy to commit campaign finance violations and potential impeachment for that. but the things happening in the state of new york i find interesting. this attorney general s civil suit involving the trump foundation which she has referred to for a criminal tax investigation. that is one that suggests to me it has some legs.
faced by the president has widened and deepened substantially this week. the legal liability of the president is no longer an abstraction. you may believe it or you may not believe it, but it is now on the doorstep of the president, and that has meant that some people are openly talking about impeachment. but let s put that aside for a second. how do you view the fact that the president now can t continue to push away the idea that nothing illegal happened around him or at his direction? yeah, illegal on so many different fronts now just in this week alone that has unfolded as adam just talked about, this conspiracy to commit campaign finance violations and as you said potential impeachment for that. but the things happening in the state of new york i find also really interesting. this attorney general s civil suit involving the trump foundation, which she has now referred to for a criminal tax investigation. that is one that suggests to me that it has some legs. you know, a case tha
take another look at the issue, they could make such a request and ask the olc to reconsider. it s not clear what has changed between 2000 and now that would cause olc to reach a different conclusion, but certainly they can make that request and ask olc to revisit the issue. so this thing on the web page, the home page of the olc, should the special counsel conclude that the extraordinary circumstances of any particular decision would render compliance inappropriate, he or she may consult with the attorney general, what does that make you think about? i ve had people tweeting me saying the president, as he likes to talk about, shot someone in the head on fifth avenue, that would constitute unusual circumstances that would result in somebody being able to indict him. what does that line look like? the extraordinary circumstances language is in the special counsel regulations and it applies to extraordinary circumstances that would allow the special counsel to seek