Quite a day, huh?
Paul Manafort, the former campaign manager for President Trump, was found guilty on eight felony counts Tuesday afternoon that could put him in federal prison for the rest of his life.
In one of those remarkable historical coincidences, Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney and fixer, was at that very time in a courtroom in New York City, pleading guilty to eight felony charges including two violations of federal campaign finance laws. In court, under oath, Cohen told the judge that he committed those campaign-finance crimes “in coordination with and at the direction of a candidate for federal office.”
That candidate -- the man he fingered in court as the person directing him to commit a crime -- could only be Donald Trump.
Cohen’s admitted crimes involve secret payments made to a porn star and to a former Playmate to buy their silence in the weeks leading up to the 2016 election. One secret payment -- $150,000, which is well above federal campaign-contribution limits -- was made on Trump’s behalf by the parent company of the National Enquirer. The second payment -- $130,000 -- was made by Cohen. (He later sought reimbursement from the Trump Organization by filing false claims for legal work.) Trump directed that the illegal payments be made to those women because he believed that buying their silence was essential to his hopes of becoming president. And maybe it was.
As Cohen’s attorney put it on Twitter:
These latest convictions and guilty pleas come on top of previous guilty pleas from Trump’s former national security adviser and his deputy campaign manager, among others. Add it all up, and much of Trump’s campaign inner circle has now been exposed as criminals, with the legal fate of others, including Trump’s oldest son, very much unsettled.
(Another indictment -- this one of U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif. -- was also announced Tuesday afternoon. Those charges aren't related to Trump, but with the indictment of U.S. Rep. Chris Collins of New York on insider trading charges, it means that the first two GOP congressmen to endorse Trump's candidacy have since been charged with federal crimes.)
Now, it is true that none of the 16 convictions announced Tuesday are directly connected to the larger investigation into Russia’s intervention into the 2016 election and into a possible conspiracy involving American citizens. The Trump administration has already begun to stress that fact in its spin about the day’s events, and that is understandable.
However, this ain’t over yet, not by a long shot. Manafort’s financial resources are dwindling, and he faces another federal trial in September in which considerably more prison time is on the table, with considerably more payouts to lawyers. With these convictions, the pressure on him to sing just grew monumentally.
Federal prosecutors also aren’t finished with Cohen. The maximum prison time for the crimes to which he pleaded guilty is 65 years. Prosecutors have agreed to seek no more than 63 months. They also have other potential criminal trails to follow that may lead them in Cohen’s direction, and special counsel Robert Mueller no doubt has questions to ask him, under oath, about events at Trump Tower and elsewhere. These guilty pleas in no way end Cohen’s exposure to additional criminal prosecution, which means it is also not an end to the threat he poses to Trump. This may only be the beginning.
Mueller himself, of course, has been nowhere to be seen or heard, which I suspect is driving the Trump White House nuts. They would love to rewrite this narrative to cast him as their villain, and in fact are trying desperately to do so, as Trump’s tweets indicate. But they can’t land a punch on a man who isn’t there, and their frustration is showing.
Rudy Giuliani, for example, has given Mueller a deadline of early September for all this to be wrapped up or risk the Trump legal team coming down on him “like a ton of bricks;” Mueller shows absolutely no sign of concern about these alleged bricks.
Two weeks ago, Giuliani also delivered what he called Trump’s “final offer” on a possible interview between the president and Mueller, and demanded an answer. So far, Mueller has responded with a chilly, intimidating silence, saying nothing. It seems to me that he’s just letting them sweat, letting them wonder day and night what he has, what he knows and who in their circle is singing, letting the pressure on them build and build and build and build.
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