Trump May Have Broken Federal Bribery Laws. What Will His Justice Dept Do?
A Washington Post article this weekend reported a new strategy that Republican Senators are running up the flag pole as they prepare for President Trump's nearly certain impeachment trial. They might admit "Trump's quid pro quo on Ukraine," but argue that it "was not illegal" or worthy of impeachment.
This not only makes no sense legally, but highlights an increasingly urgent question that too few people are asking. Now that the snowballing evidence of quid pro quo has become so rock solid that even Trump's most die-hard stalwarts feel political pressure to concede it, a question begs to be answered: Why hasn't the Department of Justice opened a formal criminal inquiry into Trump's conduct?
"The facts as we now know them sketch out the possibility of a criminal violation of the anti-bribery statute," says Paul Rosenzweig, a former senior counsel in Independent Counsel Ken Starr's Whitewater investigation and now a senior fellow at the R Street Institute. "Were the President anyone other than the President, that would be sufficient predication to open an investigation."
Early on, of course, shortly after the President's July 25 call to Ukrainian President. That law forbids soliciting a "thing of value" from a foreign national in connection with a federal election. "Justice Department lawyers determined that help with a government investigation could not be quantified as 'a thing of value' under the law," the reported.
