Witness tampering

Trump is in fact engaged in witness tampering, on Twitter.

It’s this one:

I was shocked by how inappropriate that is from a president talking about a Senate hearing, but it took a lawyer friend to point out that it’s witness tampering.

Some observers are reporting it that way.

Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) is asking whether Donald Trump committed a federal crime by engaging in witness intimidation with a tweet about Sally Yates. If Trump was convicted of witness intimidation, he could be sentenced to up to 20 years in prison.

It seems pretty ludicrous to deny that that tweet is intimidating, and it does of course name a witness. It doesn’t get much more intimidating than a mentally unstable and vindictive head of state openly threatening you.

Replies to that tweet note that the tampering one also appears on the official POTUS account, which he apparently can’t delete.

The question that Rep. Lieu raised was an interesting one. Is a tweet from the President Of The United States before a witness testifies before Congress potential witness tampering?

A judge would have to answer that question, but Trump is clearly using his social media presence to shape witness testimony. If this is a case of witness tampering, Trump’s tweets could land him in serious legal trouble.

Is that the kind of crime that law enforcement can just ignore because Republicans control everything? Could Trump murder and devour people on camera and not be prosecuted?

13 Responses to “Witness tampering”