Washington: President Donald Trump has warned the US economy would collapse if he were impeached, as legal chaos roiling the White House had experts saying his presidency is under threat.
Speaking on the eve of a closely watched meeting of central bank chiefs on Friday, Trump also took aim again at his Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, prompting a rare retort from the embattled justice department chief. Days after Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen told a federal judge that he had made illegal campaign contributions at the president’s request – to silence women alleging affairs with Trump – the Republican leader told Fox News that 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 severe back-to-back blows on Tuesday when Cohen pled 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.
The Manafort conviction was the first case sent to trial by the special prosecutor probing Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
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 the Republican presidential candidate.
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.
Trump was evasive when asked in the Fox News interview if he had instructed Cohen to make the payments, saying that his former lawyer “made the deals,” and insisted that Cohen’s actions were “not a crime.”
Trump praised Manafort for going to trial, in which the president’s former campaign chief was found guilty of eight counts of financial fraud.
The president lauded the 69-year-old Manafort for leaving his fate to a jury rather than striking a plea deal – a move that has sparked speculation Manafort hopes for a pardon. (AFP)
