Trump reportedly wants to win re-election to avoid indictments

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published 6 March 2019

President Trump wants more out of a second term than that far-from-built wall.

As multiple investigations continue to swirl, Trump has taken comfort in the fact that current Justice Department policy says "a president cannot be indicted while in office," people close to Trump tell The New York Times. In fact, the promise of using the presidency as a legal shield is reportedly one of the reasons Trump wants to stay in the White House.

On Tuesday, the Times published copies of six checks Trump paid to his former lawyer Michael Cohen. They're among 11 checks Cohen received to cover "hush payments to prevent alleged sexual misconduct from being exposed before the 2016 presidential election," the Times says. Cohen provided two of those checks to Congress last week, and pleaded guilty last year to financial crimes relating to those payments.

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Cohen implicated Trump in his campaign finance crimes last year, and these check copies only add to the "quality of the evidence" against Cohen and Trump, former White House counsel Robert Bauer tells the Times. This "now leaves little doubt that [Trump] faces criminal prosecution after he leaves office," says Bauer, who served under former President Barack Obama. So it's no wonder that Trump is trying to hunker down in the Oval Office as long as he can. Read more at The New York Times.

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Kathryn is a graduate of Syracuse University, with degrees in magazine journalism and information technology, along with hours to earn another degree after working at SU's independent paper The Daily Orange. She's currently recovering from a horse addiction while living in New York City, and likes to share her extremely dry sense of humor on Twitter.

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