This Is the Law That Could Take Down Trump

Bribery statutes apply to public officials. And Trump became one, says one federal prosecutor, when he became the GOP nominee. 

It’s all well and good for Paul Manafort to spend 15 years in prison for money laundering, and Rick Gates to plead guilty to cut a deal, and Alex Van Der Zwaan to miss the birth of his first child because he lied to the FBI.

But it would be an injustice if, once again, those around the president suffer and he is left unscathed. He was the beneficiary of the highly questionable Russian contacts his campaign made and desperately tried to keep secret leading up to the 2016 election, which speaks of collusion and much worse. Trump couldn’t have chosen two top advisers with more contacts with the Kremlin than campaign manager Manafort and national security adviser Michael Flynn. He could hardly have praised Russia President Valdimir Putin more. And he could have hardly benefitted more from Russian interference than to win.

Of course, there’s no law against Trump liking Putin; unseemly yes, illegal, no. But a veteran Washington former federal prosecutor who served during both the Clinton and Bush administrations believes there is a strategy that Mueller is quietly pursuing and that explains his actions so far.

Seth Waxman, now a partner specializing in white-collar crime in Dickinson Wright’s Washington office, has a theory of Mueller’s case, which requires no novel reading of existing law to find Trump broke it. It employs the main weapon any federal prosecutor uses to police public corruption. It is Title 18 United States Code, section 201 that specifically makes it a crime for a public official to take “anything of value,” a bribe, in exchange for government action, which can be prospective.

Note that above I wrote “public official.” That’s because the law is generally wielded against public officials. Problem: Mueller is investigating conduct before Trump became one. Enter Waxman. He points out that in 1962, Congress extended the bribery law to cover activity prior to the assumption of office. It did so, he says, in order to close a “loophole” afforded those “who assume public office under a corrupt commitment.” The upshot? Trump became covered by 18 USC not when he was sworn in but as of July 21, 2016 when he became his party’s nominee in Cleveland, Ohio.

What we know of Mueller’s strategy so far is consistent with leveling charges under the bribery statute. This is not to say Mueller is going to indict Trump. He would need an exception from a Justice Department rule, which advises against it. But neither is he likely to send a report laying out grounds for impeachment as former independent counsel Ken Starr did against Bill Clinton relying solely on perjury and obstruction of justice without a finding of an underlying crime.

“The upshot? Trump became covered by 18 USC not when he was sworn in but as of July 21, 2016 when he became his party’s nominee in Cleveland, Ohio.”

The bribery statute requires a finding of a quid pro quo, a this for a that. The quid is obviously Russian meddling in our election—a given to everyone but Trump himself—which worked to his everlasting benefit. Thus Mueller’s focus on the summer 2016 meeting at Trump Tower, the one Trump’s senior team of Donald Jr., Jared Kushner, and Manafort had with Natalia Veselnitskaya, a prominent Kremlin lawyer.  This was the meeting former chief White House strategist Steve Bannon called “treasonous.” When it became public, Trump was so concerned he got uncharacteristically involved in the details of defending it, drafting a statement, which said the meeting was simply about “adoptions.”

It wasn’t at all. It was an offer of “dirt” on Hillary Clinton which Don Jr. eagerly accepted, responding, “I love it.” The mere contact, Bannon said, should have prompted an immediate call to the FBI. But Trump was too soft on Putin to see the Russian contacts for what they were and thought he could hide behind the adoption excuse. In any event, Trump welcomed Russian involvement (“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing”) not to mention Trump’s hope that WikiLeaks would turn its attention to Democrats. He wasn’t joking.