Trump invokes ‘advice-of-counsel’ defence in campaign probe
NEW YORK — President Donald Trump offered a simple defence Thursday to accusations he broke campaign finance law by directing attorney Michael Cohen to orchestrate hush-money payments to conceal Trump’s alleged affairs: He was following terrible advice from a bad lawyer.
“I never directed Michael Cohen to break the law. He was a lawyer and he is supposed to know the law. It is called ‘advice of counsel,’” Trump wrote on Twitter.
The advice-of-counsel defence is a real thing. But Trump’s ability to use it, if he were ever formally accused of a crime, is far from certain. And it could be risky.
“People talk about advice-of-counsel as a defence more than it’s actually asserted, and it’s rarely successful,” said Dane Ciolino, a constitutional law professor at Loyola University in New Orleans.