US President Donald Trump warned on Thursday that the US economy would collapse if he were impeached, as legal chaos roiling the White House has experts saying his presidency is under threat.
Days after Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen told a federal judge he made illegal campaign contributions at the president’s request — to silence women alleging affairs with Trump — the Republican leader told Fox News an impeachment would only cause more turmoil.
"I will tell you what, if I ever got impeached, I think the market would crash. I think everybody would be very poor," Trump said on Fox and Friends. "You would see — you would see numbers that you wouldn’t believe in reverse."
Trump was dealt back-to-back blows on Tuesday when Cohen pleaded guilty to illegal campaign finance violations and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort was convicted of tax and bank fraud within minutes of each other.
— IF I EVER GOT IMPEACHED, I THINK THE MARKET WOULD CRASH. I THINK EVERYBODY WOULD BE VERY POOR
But an unchastened Trump appears intent on riding out the storm as Washington grapples with the latest upheaval in his tumultuous presidency.
The president has insisted he did nothing wrong after Cohen, his longtime private lawyer and fixer, implicated him in the illicit hush payments made before the 2016 election to two women who claimed to have had affairs with Trump.
Although Cohen did not name them, the women were believed to be porn star Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal.
Because the hush payments were intended to influence the outcome of the elections, they violated US laws governing campaign contributions.
In entering a guilty plea, Cohen said the payments were made "in co-ordination with and at the direction of a candidate for federal office", in clear reference to Trump.
Trump was evasive when asked in the Fox News interview if he had instructed Cohen to make the payments, saying his former lawyer "made the deals" and insisted that Cohen’s actions were "not a crime". He then said the hush payments were financed with his own money — to which Cohen had access — and that while he had no knowledge of them at the time, he had since been fully transparent.
Despite Trump’s defiant tone, Washington-based campaign finance expert Kate Belinski, of the Nossaman law firm, said to expect legal consequences for both Trump and his campaign — most likely in the form of a civil complaint before the Federal Election Commission.
AFP
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