Donald Trump Values Loyalty Over A Functional Criminal Justice System

The president doesn't think prosecutors should use cooperation agreements.

It almost ought to be outlawed. It’s not fair… If you can say something bad about Donald Trump and you will go down to two years or three years, which is the deal he made, in all fairness to him, most people are going to do that. … And I have seen it many times. I have had many friends involved in this stuff. It’s called flipping and it almost ought to be illegal… I know all about flipping, 30, 40 years I have been watching flippers. Everything is wonderful and then they get 10 years in jail and they flip on whoever the next highest one is or as high as you can go.

—Donald Trump, in an interview with Fox News discussing the plea deal his former attorney, Michael Cohen, made with federal prosecutors. Though that plea deal did not require Cohen’s cooperation with the government in exchange for the negotiated sentence, Trump still railed against the practice in his interview. As Matt Axelrod, partner at Linklaters notes, cooperation agreements are a vital part of criminal justice system, “Prosecutors use cooperators to work their way up the organizational hierarchy. Without cooperators, prosecutors are often left with a case against just the worker bees, not the bosses.”


headshotKathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

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