Trevor Potter:

Well, starting with the founders, who were greatly concerned about foreign interference in U.S. elections, there are examples going all the way back to the early days of the country where foreign governments tried to influence our elections. It was a scandal. The French envoy was thrown out of the United States for trying to do that.

In terms of the specifics here, I think it's important to remember that the Justice Department's special counsel report specifically says that providing anything of value to a U.S. candidate from a foreign country, a foreign state, is illegal.

And anything of value, the Mueller report says, would specifically include confidential information. And the Mueller report says that's actually more central valuable than giving the candidate some money, because it's something they probably couldn't otherwise get.

So we already know that taking something or soliciting something from a foreign government is, in fact, illegal. The Mueller report went on to say they were not going to prosecute the Trump campaign or Don Trump Jr., who met with the Russians, who had promised information.

And Mueller says that's because, we can't prove that he knew it was illegal at the time. But that's very different than where we are now, when we have the statement in that report that says the standard here is, the law says you can't take anything from a foreign government, anything of value.

So I suspect the president, in making his comments, had not consulted his lawyers, had not been advised by them. And he clearly would be, I think, making a legal mistake if he went forward with talking to a foreign government about this.