«As it is well known that the government offers leniency to cooperating defendants, the promise of a pardon would have the appearance of being in exchange for silence as to Trump’s involvement in the payments to Stormy Daniels,» Kerwick added.
Daniels had claimed that she had sex with Donald Trump and that Cohen had paid her for her silence.
Two weeks after the raid, an ABC News journalist asked Trump about a pardon for Cohen if any charges emerged.
Trump retorted: «Stupid question!» and moved to a different reporter.
The prosecution seeks to prove that before the 2016 presidential election, Trump paid or discussed paying two women—adult film star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal—to not disclose his alleged affairs with them. He denies affairs with both women.
Caroline Fredrickson, an attorney and law professor at Georgetown law school in Washington, D.C., and attorney Alan Neff wrote that the Nixon case shows that there is «unquestionable congressional and constitutional precedent that an obstructive pardon is an impeachable offense.»
«If the president issues an obstructive pardon, it could constitute an impeachable abuse of power, for which there is clear precedent in the articles of impeachment drafted by the House Judiciary Committee against Richard Nixon.»
«The first count in the Nixon articles of impeachment charged him with ‘using the powers of his high office, engaged personally and through his close subordinates and agents, in a course of conduct or plan designed to delay, impede and obstruct the investigation of such illegal entry [into the Watergate hotel],'» they wrote.
The specific allegations were that Nixon caused «prospective defendants, and individuals duly tried and convicted, to expect favored treatment and consideration in return for their silence or false testimony, or rewarding individuals for their silence or false testimony.'»
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