This is Bloomberg Law with June Grassoe from Bloomberg Radio. President Trump has more at stake in this election than whether he remains in the White House. Being president has given Trump what is effectively immunity from federal criminal prosecutions and has allowed him to stall civil law suits against him and his business. When he leaves office, that equation changes.
So could there be a United States v. Trump? Although any federal prosecution of Trump would be political dynamite, but New York v. Trump is a distinct possibility since there is an active investigation by the Manhattan District Attorney that could result in state criminal charges, and of course, there are several civil lawsuits that would likely move forward at
a faster pace. Joining me is former federal prosecutor Robert Mints, a partner m Carter In English, Bob explain how the presidency has effectively given Trump a temporary shield against prosecutions
and lawsuits. As president, President Trump has been able to block and delay many investigations and civil lawsuits that have been filed against them, essentially arguing that as president of the United States, he is too busy to deal with heavial cases, sit for depositions for example, produced documents, and that under the laws, he is immune from prosecution for federal criminal cases while he is the sitting president of the United States. Let's turn now to possible federal criminal
charges after he leaves office. Smaller report detailed several episodes in which Trump may have obstructed justice, but didn't recommend criminal charges, citing the official Justice Department position that a sitting president CAMPI indited. Is it possible that after he leaves office, Trump could face obstruction of justice charges? Yes, in every regard. The fact that the president leaves office makes it easier for prosecutors and frankly plaintiffs and civil
cases as well to pursue their cases against him. As far as the obstruction of justice case that was laid out by the Mueller report, you're absolutely correct that Mr Mueller ultimately stopped short of making you finding as to whether or not there was obstruction of justice, citing the Department of Justice is internal memorandum which says that the
Department of Justice cannot indict a sitting president. So what Mr Mueller did was, rather than render an opinion as to whether or not there was a violation here, he simply laid out the facts and left them hanging out there for others to decide whether there was an obstruction case. Assuming the president is no longer in office, then those
cases could theoretically go forward. A Biden Department of Justice would not be barred from pursuing the roadmap that Mr Mueller laid out in his port as to potential obstruction of justice charges if they chose to pursue them. So that would be a political question really about whether Biden Justice Department would want to bring criminal charges against a former president. I think that if the case were to be revived by the Department of Justice under a President Biden,
they would have to be further investigation. In other words, they would not simply rely on the work that was done solely by Muller and his investigators. There would be a new investigation. There would be a new grand jury that was impaneled in order to gather more evidence. But
that would be an absolute political bombshell. The idea of the Justice Department pursuing a criminal case against a former president is obviously something that has never been contemplated before in the history of this country and would be something that would be extremely divisive. I think that the Department of Justice would consider very carefully before they decided to go down that road. Trump's longtime personal lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, was sentenced to more than three years in
prison after pleading guilty to campaign finance violations. Cohen said Trump, who was identified in case filings as Individual Number one, directed the hush money payment just before the election. Federal prosecutors obviously never charged Trump, could or would the Justice Department bring that case now? He answered, that question is the Department of Justice could take another look at that case.
They did charge Michael Cohen with campaign finance violations in connection with hush money payments that led up to the seen election. There was a reference in those case filings as individual number one, which was later purportedly a reference to the President. There was also a non prosecution agreement that the Department of Justice entered into with the National Enquirer, and where in the National enquire Are admitted working with Michael Cone and the Trump campaign to kill certain damaging
stories about candidate Trump. Whether Department of Justice would then take that case up is very much an open question. Part of the problem there is that one of the key witnesses in that case would obviously be Michael Cone, and there's a question there whether Michael Cone would be a sufficiently credible witness to build a case around. They would really have to be additional evidence for them to
take a look at that. And then that still goes back to the question about whether the Department of Justice would want to pick up a case to prosecute a former president, something that would again be considered highly controversial and a real political bombshell where they could go down that road. The New York Times didn't investigative report on Trump's taxes that reveal many questionable deductions as well as
other problems. Are criminal charges for tax fraud possible by the I R s. There's a lot of information, then a lot of news that's been out there regarding the president tax returns, which of course i've never been made public. The New York Times did reveal, according to their sources, that the president paid only seven dred and fifty dollars in income taxes in sixteen, for example. But there's a real question here about whether these tax returns would ultimately
be the subject of a federal criminal tax investigation. These
are difficult cases to make. Prosecutors have to show that an individual deliberately set out to defraud the government, there has to be some concrete proof in files or emails, for example, or statements made by witnesses that there is a conscious effort to defraud the I R s. And in this case, as in many cases involving high level executives or high network individuals, there are always lawyers and accountants who are involved in many layers of these transactions
and in the preparation of these tax returns, which tend to insulate an individual from criminal tax liability. So at the end of the day, these would be difficult charges to make in a criminal context. That's not to say that the I R S might not review these tax returns and ultimately have some kind of a civil claim against the president for taxes that the I R S may claim our owed having to do with certain deductions
that were taken in previous years. But it's unlikely that there would be a federal criminal prosecution that ultimately emerges based upon the president's tax returns. The Manhattan d A has been investigating Trump, and Trump fought the subpoenas for financial records all the way to the Supreme Court. Let's take the question of Trump pardoning himself. A president pardoning himself, so Trump could pardon himself in federal cases, but not in a state case. So the president has broad power
to pardon individuals from seaederal crime. And that came up very much in the context of the prosecution of Paul Manafort, for example, the president its former campaign manager, and others who were prosecuted for crimes in connection with the President's campaign or in many cases in unrelated issues, and there was always this question about whether the President might pardon Paul Mattafford, Michael Flynn, and others. Uh, that does not
apply to potential state prosecutions. Under the law, states are a separate, separate sovereign, which means that they are not able to be pardoned by the president. So that has given the Manhattan Deer, the New York Attorney General, and other state ages the ability to continue to pursue investigations, and ultimately the president is not in a position to pardon individuals in connection with those investigations and not able to pardon himself in connection with any potential state crimes.
Now you mentioned the New York Attorney General, she is investigate whether the Trump family's real estate company falsely reported property values to secure loans or tax benefits. That's a civil case. Could that become a criminal case? Well, right now, the Attorney's General's investigation is a civil matter. It could possibly become a criminal case. But my guess is that that will stay a civil investigation and we'll have to wait and see whether anything developed out of that and
the emolument suits. There are congressional Democrats to Democratic attorneys general in a watchdog group brought three lawsuits accusing Trump of violating the U s. Constitutions and Monuments Clause, and it's something that no court has ever ruled on before.
Are those suits likely to be dropped? Yeah. The allegations involving the emolument cases really have to do with the charge that President Trump has used his office of the President for personal profit, and they focused on specifically that the president received allegedly gifts or things of value from foreign governments by accepting money that representatives from Saudi Arabia or other countries have spent at the Trump Hotel in Washington.
In particular, those cases will essentially go away if the president is no longer in office. At this point, the president has been able to deflect those cases and in one case had one of them dismissed. One of them cases brought by congressional Democrats. But the goal of the Monument's cases was always to force the president to fully
divest themselves from his business while in office. The idea behind that is that you don't want a situation where a president may be making decisions for personal gain rather than in the interests of the country. That will no longer be a relevant concern if the president is no longer in office, and violations of the Monuments clauses do not carry any financial penalty, so the remedy would really
be already resolved there. If the president is no longer in office, then he's no longer allegedly being a position to benefit himself personally on those cases will simply go away. If the president is no longer president of the United States, so would the same applied to Democrats trying to get ahold of Trump's financial records. Once he's out of office.
That would be a done deal. As too many of these investigations and many of these civil cases, the president has relied on the fact that he is the president United States and that can respond to these cases would
interfere with his duties as president. That argument obviously goes away when he's still longer president United States, and he would then be treated more or less as any average citizen of this country would be in terms of being potentially forced to sit for deposition, to have to respond to document requests and provide other information. In connection with civil cases, President Trump has several civil lawsuits penning against him.
There's a multi level marketing fraud suit where Trump and three of his children were sued for fraud in twenty eighteen over their endorsement on Celebrity Apprentice of a c N Opportunity LLC, a troubled multi level marketing company that later went bust. There's also Mary Trump's frauds suit against the President. The President's needs last months suited him for conspiring with his brother and sister to defraud her of millions of dollars from her grandfather's estate using false documents
and bogus loans. There are two defamation cases. Summer Zervo's, a former contestant on The Apprentice, issued a statement a few weeks before the sixteen elections saying Trump groped and kissed her a hotel room in two thousand seven, he denied the assault and called Zervo's a liar, leading her to sue him for defamation. In a really interesting case because of the tact that the Justice Department has taken
is Ee Gene Carol's defamation suit against Trump. Last month, the Justice Department tried to step in tell us what happened there. That case had to do with an allegation from a New York advice columnists who claimed that President Trump had raped her in the Department Address Department Store
address room two decades ago. In response to that allegation, the President called her, among other things, a liar and said that she had not been telling the truth when she made those allegations against him that he had raped her two decades ago. What was interesting about that case is that the Department of Justice actually stepped in to try to take over the defense of the president in
that case. The first thing they did was to remove the case from state court to federal court, and then they tried to take over the president's defense, saying essentially that the president was acting in his official capacity when
he was denying those rape allegations. The Department Justice invoked something called the Federal Toward Claims Act, which is a statute that says that when a government official is acting officially in their pacity um and in whatever role they have as a government official, that the Department Justice can
defend them. And most importantly in a defamation case. Uh, if there is a charge that a government official to fame somebody, and if it was done in their official capacity, then that case essentially gets dismissed because the United States can't be held responsible for intentional toward claims under the
Federal Toward Claims Act. So we're the judge to grant the Department of Justice's motion and agree that when the President denied those allegations that was done in his official capacity, then the case would essentially have been dismissed instead of what happened is that Judge Kaplan, who handled the case, denied the Department of Justice requests and held that the Federal Toward Claims Act cannot be read as expensively as the Department of Justice was asking the court to do.
Here and essanctually said that the President is not a quote unquote employee of the federal government for purposes of the federal for its claim tact when he denied those allegations. Thanks for being on the Bloomberg Lawn Show, Bob. That's former federal prosecutor Robert Mintz, a partner mcarter in English. Gallaine Maxwell is being held in a Brooklyn, New York jail while she awaits trial next year on charges she traffic girls as young as fourteen for her former boyfriend
Jeffrey Epstein. Maxwell's testimony a civil lawsuit by one of her accusers was made public last week, joining me as Bloomberg Legal reporter Patricia Hurtado tell us about the deposition, pat Well, this comes from a lawsuit that started after Maxwell declared Virginia Drew Frey a liar. Virginia had given um interviews and come out and declared that she had been sex trafficed as a sex slave for Epstein and
that Maxwell had been her recruiter. So um, Maxwell hires a PR agency and declares her outright, you know, as a liar, and then Drew I filed a lawsuit in as a result of that, those statements issued the defamation lawsuit that was filed in New York, and as a result of that, that's how we get a deposition that in April sixteen, the Lane Maxwell sat for a deposition at the Boy Schiller offices and she was questioned for several hours about what her role was with Epstein. You know,
how did she know him? What were her duties? Did she ever have any sexual encounters with underage girls or witnessed anything like that? She didn't. Said that she worked for him. She was basically an aide de camp of arranging his household, hiring staffers. But she she says that she not engaged in any illegal activity if it was consensual. There was consensual adult activity, but nothing nothing illegal. She
was Epstein's girlfriend, wasn't she at some point? Yes, she was at Epstein's girlfriend from from a period of time, and she they remained to be friends, so uh. And she was employed by him, so she said. And he helped her buy a townhouse, so um. They remained close associates. And she doesn't admit to anything illegal. And in fact, she is pretty imperious in her answers. Um, there's a lot of refusals, and at one point she got so angry she slammed her hand on the table. At one point.
According to a letter that grew phrase, lawyers put in and said that she had knocked the slamming of the table, had knocked the court reporters computer off the table. There's been a lot of speculation about President Clinton. What did she say about President Clinton. There's lots of rejections, but one name that does show up is President Bill Clinton. She was asked about if she'd ever phone on a
plane with him, and uh, she said she didn't. Eyed an account by grew Frey that she Clinton never visited Epstein to private Aisland and the Caribbeans. So she takes every opportunity to slam grew Frey, saying Virginia is absolutely totally lying and basically the cries and denies every allegation that grew free mates and gew Fray did tell a
story several stories their accounts that were given. Um. She says that Maxwell piloted uh private helicopter and flew Clinton at one point, Maxwell says she does have a private pilot's license, but she never flew Clinton. So it's a kind of thing where there's these details that are pretty extravagant if you think about the high flying life literally of Jeffrey Epstein. Um, but a lot of these things are very seeny and gritty, details about was gew Frey
victimized by Epstein and Maxwell? Let me ask you this one, was has it in Clinton's name not redacted? When Prince Andrew's name was redacted, wasn't it? Yeah? There's so there's an account that Giuffrey tells, and I think by now
many people have seen. She wrote a first person story about her life and gave interviews and that Shannon encounter with Prince Andrew, who is a friend of Galenn Maxwell when she was seventeen, And there's even a photo now that's famous where Prince Andrew has her his arm around her waist and they're in Maxwell's townhouse. So in the transcripts you actually see references to Blank and London town house and did you know how long have you known Blank?
And so those redactions appear to line up with the story we know allegedly about her encounters with Prince Andrew, including a second encounter in New Mexico. Why Clinton's name is not redacted, it's unclear whether that was just clumsiness or you know, it's there's nothing untoward about it. So when did you see him? No, I didn't see him. Did you ever see him on a plane yet? Is she denied everything. Why did her attorneys fight so hard to keep this deposition from being, you know, revealed to
the press. That's a great question. It's unclear why she would have fought so hard. I guess they're concerned that Mr and Mrs Westchester County couples, who people who show up on put for jury duty on the day her trial is supposed to start, and start hearing that this is a woman who's already accused of something pretty unseemly, right, sex trafficking girls as young as fourteen decades ago and providing them, you know, and snaring them for Epstein. That's
already unseemly. You know whether or not this testimony couldn't be used. But I guess the worry for her was anyone who might read this might feel it's such a toxic subject. It would paint her in people's eyes as being completely innocent of any wrongdoing. So she's accused by the prosecutors of lying, and it's in relation to this deposition. Do you know which parts of the deposition they're accusing
her of lying in? Yes, it's when she's asked if she ever witnessed Epstein in the company or in with a underage minor girl and engaged any sexual activity, and she said absolutely not. She also denies being present for any of it. She said she never saw him with
underage girl. She answers the question when at one point when she's asked, do you ever see any underage girls at Epstein's island, which now we've heard from more than two dozen accusers that you know, it was a haven for Epstein to just run him up allegedly, but this is according to multiple victims. Um She says she never saw anything at all, and she's had many of my friends have children, and it's sort of like an odd answer that, you know, the apropos of nothing. So she
adamantly denies. She comes out kind of imperious and haughty in her tone. Even the reading of the transcript so the government used This was highly contested by Maxwell's lawyers. They claimed the government got their hands improperly got their hands on the sealed transcripts as and use them as
a basis to bring perjury charges. So the government says Maxo lied on nine separate occasions, and it's a basis for two perjury counts against her, saying she lied under oath I don't know anything about this while i'mdoing I never saw Epstein in the company of underage girls. I never witnessed any abuse of these underage girls. And um, they fought very hard to keep this from getting them sealed, and they even went to the federal appeals court to
try to keep it under steal. And they also argued that they had evidence the government had improperly accessed this information. But the government does have access to federal grand jury subpoenas, so there is a possibility they could have moved to get the documents unsealed. And then they saw the testimony and realized that, according to their witnesses, she's lying, so that they hit her with two perjury counts for that. There's another deposition transcript that hasn't been opened. Yeah, and
it's unclear how long this one is. Um, this one was allegedly four pages, when when it finally got to us, it was about four hundred sixty pages, and it's from April. And there's a later deposition that Maxwell's lawyer that grew phrase. Lawyers argued, look judged she never answered the questions properly.
Here's what she told us. Here's why we think we need to question her again, and they put like a dossier together of why they what they will looking for, and what their theory was and what was really interesting in these documents. It almost looks like a roadmap the government followed to build their case against Maxwell. You know, their theory of the case was that she was part
of it. She recruited these girls, she brought them in, and it was based on this lawsuit that sort of triggered this renewed look at Maxwell after Epstein, you know, play guilty in Florida to state charges and got to do as time part time in jail in Florida. You know, she had access to millions and millions of dollars. Can you tell from this where she got her money? Now
it's totally unclear. I mean, her father allegedly was you know, a newspaper baron, but died in under unusual circumstances and a drowning, and it's unclear whether the family still had money. She potentially has money from her parents, her family and her father and the trust. But she bought a fifteen million dollar townhouse in Manhattan on the Upper East Side, very lovely, and you know where she got the money. She says that Epstein helped her buy it. Where Epstein
got his money is also a question. So these are all these very murky trans financial transactions that are unexplained. Do we know what her defense is at trial? She's um arguing that she's possibly a victim as well of Epstein, that she came under his thrall right, now, what we have seen is her lawyers fighting everything on civil fronts. They're still fighting all the accusers, they're still going after them.
Most recently on Friday, they argued that the prosecutors had built their case against her by basically relying on old information against Epstein, and that they weren't being forthcoming and providing her with the information she deserves to fight the case. Now.
Her trial is supposed to start next July, and the government has been handing over tranches of evidence to her, but they complained that they're not getting enough, and they were going to the federal judge who's presiding over the case to try to tweet the government into giving them more. Thanks pat that's Bloomberg Legal reporter Patricia Hurtado, And that's it for the edition of the Bloomberg Law Show. I'm June Grosso. And this is Bloomberg