Eric Trump suddenly has a big problem
For awhile now it’s been easy to draw a fairly straight line from Donald Trump Jr to a prison cell. He met with the Russians during the election, in a knowing attempt at receiving stolen goods and illegal gifts of value to a campaign, among other things. But what about Eric Trump? It turns out Donald Trump dragged him rather squarely into his scandals and coverups as well.
The story being reported today is that earlier this year, Donald Trump instructed Michael Cohen and Eric Trump to find a way to prevent Stormy Daniels from going public with the details of their affair. This is coming from the Wall Street Journal. While there have been aspects of the Stormy Daniels scandal that have clearly been illegal, it’s not immediately clear if this is one of them. However, that’s not the big story here.
The big deal is that this is confirmation that Donald Trump has in fact been using Eric Trump as a de facto fixer – or more specifically, fixer’s assistant – in his criminal scandals. In what other instances did Donald use Eric in this manner? Were laws broken in those instances? This opens up a Pandora’s box of potential criminal liability for Eric Trump. But the biggest deal here is that Donald had Michael Cohen and Eric working together on these kinds of things, because Cohen has since cut a plea deal, and he’s reportedly been cooperating fully with federal and state investigators.
In other words, Eric Trump suddenly has a big problem. In fact, you have to wonder who the source is for this Wall Street Journal story. Is this Robert Mueller’s way of signaling to Eric that Michael Cohen has sold him out, and that it’s time to consider cutting a plea deal against his father? Stay tuned, because whatever is going with this Eric Trump storyline, this is probably just the beginning of it.
