Trump’s best legal defense.

The presidency itself may amount to Donald Trump’s best legal defense.

If Trump is reelected in 2020, he will win more than the White House. He will also delay or even escape criminal prosecution.

Cohen’s payments to the women constituted illegal use of campaign contributions, and Trump could be vulnerable to criminal charges as a result. But long-standing Justice Department protocol dating to the Watergate scandal holds that a president can’t be indicted while in office.

That would change as soon as Trump is reduced to "former president."

“Once he’s out, he is like any other citizen and he can be indicted,” Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, told POLITICO.

That could mean reelection may be Trump’s best legal defense.

Prominent figures on the left and right are increasingly focusing on Trump’s post-presidential jeopardy.

Ken Starr, the independent counsel who investigated Clinton, said in a recent interview with Vice News that special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe could end with an indictment once Trump is no longer president.

"My takeaway is 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," California Rep. Adam Schiff, a former prosecutor and Democratic chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, added on "Face the Nation.”



Concerned Trump might be able to outlast the threat of criminal charges under current law, Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said he’s considering legislation that would extend the statute of limitations to encompass crimes committed during Trump’s presidency.



Trump’s defenders say that when it comes to Cohen’s payoffs of two women who allege they had sex with Trump, the president is on firm legal standing.

But Trump does pop up repeatedly in court documents alleging that the payments were illegal use of campaign contributions.



Federal prosecutors based in New York, who took the Cohen case on a referral from Mueller, named Trump more than 20 times in their Friday filing, referring to him as “Individual 1.”



“At some point the only thing standing between Trump & indictment is his presidential status,” Neal Katyal tweeted on Twitter. “The moment that ends, his criminal exposure is yuge. Not just campaign finan[ces] but tax too.”



In Trump’s case, one big question is whether any potential crimes fall within the statute of limitations — which in most federal cases lasts for five years.