I guess maybe we should ask ourselves, what crimes has Donald Trump likely committed that he could be punished for?
Off the top of my head, and based on stuff that is publically known, I have:
Prior to his 2016 run for president:
Note that some of these might be past the statute of limitations.
- Tax/bank/insurance fraud: overstating the value of certain properties to secure bank loans and/or understating them for tax purposes
- Tax fraud: payments to Ivanka as a 'consultant' while she was employed with the Trump organization
- Tax fraud: Use of property classified as an investment property for personal use (See:
Detroit News)
- Money Laundering: We know that he has sold properties at far above market values to Russian interests. We also know that Trump uses a lot of shell companies, which raises a lot of red flags. (See:
Wired)
Since his Run for president:
- Campaign finance violations (payments to Stormy Daniels)
- Perjury (Mueller claimed that Trump was less than truthful in written responses he gave during his investigation)
- Giving false weather statements (Remember sharpie-gate, where he drew on a weather map and claimed Alabama might be affected by a hurricane. Apparently that is actually against the law.)
Other stuff...
Some of the stuff Trump has done are unethical and
potentially illegal, but would be difficult or impossible to bring charges for various reasons:
- Emoluments clause: Its unconstitutional for the president to accept gifts, and its possible that foreign governments using Trump hotels would be a violation of that clause. (Same with U.S. government use of his properties too.) However, it is not a criminal code violation. (Its possible that maybe they may be able to work it into a 'bribery' crime.)
- Violation of the Hatch act, by using the white house for campaign events. (However, I believe the president is excluded from the Hatch act.)
- Violating the presidential records act (By destroying memos and other items that he has read.) Unfortunately I don't think there is any sort of penalty associated with doing so.
- Violation of various secrecy acts. This is complex, because the president does have the right to declassify information, but it still must be done following a certain methodology. (He can't just blurt out "here is where the alien bodies are stored in area 51", he needs to declassify the data first before revealing it.)