Iran Press/America: President Donald Trump has been warned he faces the "very real prospect" of jail time as the fallout from the bombshell publication of court filings intensifies, The Independent newspaper reported.
As the probe into Trump's conduct both before and after the 2016 presidential elections escalates, House Democrats are openly raising the prospect of impeachment or prison time for the US president if it is proved he directed illegal hush-money payments to women.
Jerry Nadler, the incoming chairman of the house judiciary committee, described the details in prosecutors' filings in the case of Trump's former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, as evidence Trump was "at the centre of a massive fraud".
"They would be impeachable offences," Nadler said.
"There's a very real prospect that on the day Donald Trump leaves office, the Justice Department may indict him, that he may be the first president in quite some time to face the real prospect of jail time," said Adam Schiff, the incoming chairman of the House intelligence committee.
"The bigger pardon question may come down the road as the next president has to determine whether to pardon Donald Trump."
In the filings, prosecutors in New York for the first time link Mr Trump to a federal crime of illegal payments to buy the silence of two women during the 2016 campaign.
When asked what usually happened after such a filing, James Comey, the sacked former FBI director, told MSNBC: “That person would be in serious jeopardy of being charged.”
Special counsel Robert Mueller's office also laid out previously undisclosed contacts between Trump associates and Russian intermediaries and suggested the Kremlin aimed early on to influence Mr Trump and his Republican campaign by playing to both his political and personal business interests. At least 14 Trump campaign members spoke with Russians during the election. 211/103
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