the entire length of the newspaper and seems to be screaming at you at the top of its newspaper lungs. this is the sitting president basically being called an unindicted co-conspirator to a crime as an active participant in an illegal hush money payment by michael cohen to boost trump s chances of becoming president. this is trump s long-time personal lawyer, this guy here, declaring in open court under fear of perjury that he was directed to commit that crime by candidate donald trump and that they conspired together in the act for the sole purpose of getting donald trump closer to the oval office. that s what michael cohen pled guilty to in those two felony counts. that news this week, that the sitting president was not only adjacent to criminal activity during the election but an active participant in it. that opens a brand-new window into the way we view this presidency and what might come
amount to an incapacitation. in plain english, please do not indict a sitting president. that was the opinion of the department of justice in 1973. 27 years later in the year 2000, the same office of legal counsel doubled down on that opinion. quote, the indictment or criminal prosecution of a sitting president would unconstitutionally undermine the capacity of the executive branch to perform its constitutionally assigned functions. the question of whether a serving president can be indicted came up again this week with president trump playing an unindicted role in a pair of felonies to which his former personal lawyer, michael cohen, pled guilty. the president s lawyers would have you believe that the olc s opinion is a hard and fast rule and that, therefore, the special counsel robert mueller cannot indict president trump while he
implied it was a blind trust. it s simply not a blind trust. he spends half its time in his businesses so it s not a blind trust but there s no hard divider that says donald trump sr. can t know what s happening in his business. they sort of made vague promises. they won t talk to him very often about it. he said he d stay away but there s no bar on him reaching into his business. the trust is an administrative structure that doesn t keep donald trump out but gives day-to-day control to thee these executives, don junior, eric and allen weisselberg. what role, if any, would prosecutors be looking at in terms of these transactions that might involve donald trump jr. or eric? do we think they re involved? we know allen weisselberg was asked about this in his testimony in the southern district of new york in the cohen case. we know from the criminal information that he gave some information about it. we don t know the full picture and the question i have lingering is were they intere