Michael Cohen: Jailed Trump would sell national security secrets to other prisoners 'for a bag of tuna'
14 November 2023
If 2024 presidential frontrunner Donald Trump were convicted in any of the four criminal indictments he is facing and sentenced to prison, he would be unlike any other prisoner in U.S. history. Never before has a former U.S. president faced over 90 criminal counts.
A Washington Post article published in early August raised a fascinating question: How would the U.S. Secret Service handle Trump's incarceration? Anthony Guglielmi, a U.S. Secret Service spokesman, didn't know how to answer the Post's question "because there is no such policy or procedure that currently exists."
Under U.S. law, former presidents are entitled to lifetime Secret Service protection.
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During a Monday, November 13 appearance on CNN, Michael Cohen — Trump's former personal attorney and fixer — raised another question about a hypothetical Trump incarceration: How would it affect "national security" matters?
Cohen stressed that while Trump "needs to be held accountable" for his actions, he worries that the former president would share "national security secrets" behind bars.
Cohen told CNN's Jake Tapper, "Do I believe if it was anyone else, that the individual would already be in jail? The answer is emphatically yes…. But because he was the former president of the United States — and for four years, he was debriefed on a daily basis on our national security secrets — I personally, as an American citizen, I would be concerned. Because Donald is the kind of guy to sell any of that information for a bag of tuna or a book of stamps. And I do really mean that."
Cohen added, "It's dangerous for America to have someone like Donald Trump in an environment where he can share the information. Look, he's already shared that information with members of Mar-a-Lago and other individuals that came to visit. So why would he not do it if it benefited him somehow, in some way, in a prison situation?"
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