Stephen Nulty 12:50 pm on August 22, 2018
Tags: , , , , , , ukraine, viktor yanukovych   

Wednesday 22 August 2018 – Paul Manafort: FOUND GUILTY! Michael Cohen: PLEADS GUILTY! Cohen implicates Trump in campaign finance violations.

NOTE: elements of this post were added or edited on Thursday 23 August 2018.  Additional hyperlinks were also added on this date.

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The events of yesterday were quite astonishing in the continuing allegations surrounding the President over collusion with Russia to influence the 2016 Presidential election as well as the activities of members of his campaign team and his subsequent administration.  In the space of a couple of minutes yesterday Mr Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort was found guilty on multiple financial crimes in a courtroom in Alexandria, Virginia and the President’s former “Mr Fix-It”, lawyer Michael Cohen (pictured above) pleaded guilty to several charges related to fraud and campaign finance laws in a New York courtroom. 


Mr Cohen had made a plea deal and while explaining to the court why he was guilty, under oath, he implicated President Trump as the man who directed him to break campaign finance laws by asking him to pay hush money in order to cover-up potentially damaging information that could have affected Mr Trump’s election campaign. Mr Cohen didn’t name the President by name but referred to him as “a candidate for federal office,” but it is clearly Mr Trump.  Under U.S. law paying undisclosed payments to bury embarrassing stories about a political candidate can be interpreted as a violation of campaign finance laws.  Effectively, Mr Cohen’s implication of Mr Trump in the payments implies that Trump is guilty of the same crime that Mr Cohen has now pleaded guilty to.  Although Mr Trump will deny his guilt he is now an unindicted co-conspirator in a felony crime.


Mr Cohen’s troubles began when a tip off from the Russian investigation led by Robert Mueller led New York prosecutors to raid Cohen’s home, office and hotel room to seize documents and computers – following which he was indicted on multiple charges.  Mr Cohen seems to have decided to place loyalty to his family and himself above his previous unwavering loyalty to his former boss and has made his plea deal.  It is reported however that he is not cooperating at the moment with the Robert Mueller investigation and has not made a cooperation deal with the prosecutors in his own case.  Without the plea deal he was facing decades in prison.  Now, it seems he will spend around five years in prison if the judge accepts the plea deal warrants a lighter sentence.  His sentencing has been set for 12 December and he has been released on  $500,000  bail.


Cohen has pleaded guilty to  tax evasion, making false statements to a financial institution, wilfully causing an  unlawful corporate contribution and making a campaign contribution at the request of a candidate or campaign – all of which are felony charges.  Robert Khuzami, the deputy U.S. Attorney General for the Southern District of New York said that Cohen’s  crimes had been “particularly significant” because he was a trained lawyer.  The prosecution said that Cohen had failed to report income of $1.3m from his taxi business, $100,000 from  brokerage commissions and $200,000 from consultancy fees.  He had provided “sham” invoices to the Trump campaign for legal fees and had sought reimbursement for his  “excessive campaign contribution” – again by submitting bogus invoices.


The bombshell from Mr Cohen was of course the implication of Mr Trump in the payment of hush money paid to porn star Stormy Daniels ($130,000) just days before the 2016 election.  Mr Cohen said that this was made at the direction of “the candidate,” or Mr Trump (referred to as “Individual 1” in the court papers).  Cohen has also spoken in his plea deal about an incident two months before the election in which he and Mr Trump discussed buying the rights to a kiss-and-tell story by former Playboy model Karen McDougal in which she claims she had an affair with Mr Trump.  Ms Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, is currently suing Trump for defamation and her lawyer, Michael Avenatti, took to Twitter to suggest Mr Cohen’s plea deal will help his client: “The developments of today will permit us to have the stay lifted in the civil case & should also permit us to proceed with an expedited deposition of Trump under oath about what he knew, when he knew it, and what he did about it. We will disclose it all to the public.”


Mr Cohen’s lawyer, Lanny Davis, said of his client’s plea deal: “Today he stood up and testified under oath that Donald Trump directed him to commit a crime by making payments to two women for the principal purpose of influencing an election.”  Mr Davis also asked the logical question:  “If those payments were a crime for Michael Cohen, then why wouldn’t they be a crime for Donald Trump?”


As of Wednesday afternoon, Mr Trump has yet to comment on Michael Cohen, perhaps realising the damage this guilty plea could do to him.  His lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, however has dismissed it by saying that there had been “no allegation of any wrongdoing against the president.”  Mr Giuliani, who tends to add more fuel to the fire every time he speaks about his client, is clearly hoping that the fact that Mr Cohen only referred to Mr Trump as “the candidate”  is enough to protect Trump.  He is also focusing on the fact that there was no allegation of a crime in relation to the Russian investigation, but ignoring the implication of a campaign finance crime.  This is clearly a ridiculous attempt by Giuliani to deflect away from what Mr Cohen did say.


What now happens to Mr Trump is the big question.  It will be difficult to prosecute him for campaign finance crimes as long as he is President.  Although it is not impossible to indict a sitting President a Justice Department policy makes this unlikely.  Robert Mueller has already made it clear that he will not attempt to indict the President while he is in office.  Therefore the only option is to remove him from office, then prosecute him. For him to be removed from the office the Democrats are going to have to seize back control of the Senate and the House of Representatives in the mid-terms elections later this year.  That is going to a very difficult task.  Even then they will still not have the two-thirds majority needed in the Senate and will therefore need the support of many Republicans in order to successfully impeach the President and remove him from office.  At the moment few Republicans seem willing or able to face up to the President for fear of the backlash that Trump will bring down on them.  Even if Mr Trump is removed from office, his successor Mike Pence may simply pardon him of all crimes in the same way that Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon after Nixon resigned from office following the Watergate scandal.  No U.S. President has been removed from office by impeachment itself.

A further interesting quandary could also come into play.  If Trump is impeached in connection with the Russian investigation, then by definition his Vice President Mike Pence has also been a beneficiary of any collusion with Russia to influence the election.  Therefore Congress could in theory remove both Trump and Pence from office which would make the Speaker of the House of Representatives the next in line of succession.  That is currently Paul Ryan, although he has said he is not running for re-election in November so will unlikely be Speaker if Trump is impeached after the midterms.  The prospect of both President Trump and Vice President Pence being removed together is of course extremely remote but we can imagine  the furore that it will create with Donald Trump but also among Republicans and the country in general.  As many Trump observers have pointed out, Trump will not leave office quietly and, unlike Richard Nixon, will not accept the situation.  Instead, he will ferment trouble among his base, call the removal from office a coup d’etat and probably spend the rest of his life attacking anyone and everyone involved in his impeachment.  Evidence that this would be the case came on Thursday morning (23rd) when the President commented that if he was impeached it would cause the economy to crash and  would leave everyone very poor and that the country could not cope without his great thinking abilities!


In the short term, it is even questionable whether the latest developments yesterday will have any meaningful negative effect on the President.  He has shown over and over again that he can weather scandals that would have brought down any other President.  It is also questionable whether it will have any effect on his base supporters who seem to have the ability to ignore all the scandals that surround Trump and who seem to be, like Trump himself, living in an alternative world where the facts are only facts if Mr Trump tells them so.  However, on Thursday (23rd) Fox News – of all people – broadcast results of a poll that showed that since July there has been a 11% rise in support for the Mueller investigation of the Trump campaign and Russia – rising to 59% – with 37% disapproving (a fall of 3%). Another poll by Fox News shows that 40% of those questioned (a rise of 5%) thought it extremely or very likely that Trump had committed criminal or impeachable offences, with 53% (a fall of 5%) answering somewhat or not at all.  This second poll shows the rise and fall since April.  (Source: MSNBC video, at point 29 minutes 20 seconds).

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Mr Trump will no doubt continue to deny any wrongdoing and will continue to denounce Robert Mueller and his Russian investigation as a “witch-hunt”.  He will be able to dismiss the guilty verdicts against his former campaign manager Paul Manafort (above) more easily as they pre-date his association with him.  It will be more difficult to distance himself from the plea deal and allegations of Michael Cohen as they relate directly to him and his campaign for the Presidency in 2016.


Mr Trump is, nevertheless, becoming increasingly worried at the dangers posed to him by both Paul Manafort, the Russian investigation and perhaps above all by Michael Cohen.  It shouldn’t be forgotten that Cohen was Trump’s personal lawyer and general fixer for a decade and will know, as they say, were the bodies are buried.  Mr Cohen’s lawyer later today, Wednesday, said that his client was open to cooperating with the Russian probe, which can only be bad for the President.  He also faces the dangers from other former Trump advisers and staff cooperating with prosecutors.  They are now facing indictments or have already been indicted or pleaded guilty, including Michael Flynn, Rick Gates and others.


Mr Manafort, at his court appearance in Virginia yesterday, was found guilty after four days of jury deliberation on eight charges of tax fraud, bank fraud and failing to disclose foreign bank accounts.  A mistrial was declared in relation to 10 other charges for which the jury could not reach a verdict and the prosecution has until the 29 August to decide whether to retry Mr Manafort on these charges.  President Trump, speaking on Thursday morning (23rd) to Fox & Friends focused on the fact the jury couldn’t reach a verdict on 10 counts and he again referred to the trial as part of the ‘witch-hunt’.  It later emerged, however, that only one of the jurors had held out against convicting Manafort on those 10 charges.  This may increase the chances that the prosecution will seek a retrial on those charges.


Although the case against Mr Cohen resulted from a tip off from the Russian investigation of Robert Mueller, the trial of Mr Manafort was as a direct result of that investigation, although none of the charges against him were directly related to the Russian collusion allegations, they came about while investigating collusion allegations.  Mr Trump has quickly jumped on this point and has said that Manafort’s conviction was part of a “witch-hunt” against him and that they had nothing to do with him.  He told reporters: “It’s a very sad thing that happened […] it had nothing to do with Russian collusion.”  As with Giuliani’s ignoring the fact that Cohen implicated him in campaign finance crimes, Trump is ignoring that fact that Manafort has been found guilty of multiple felonies and instead simply pointed out the charges have nothing to do with him.


The Manafort prosecution team had focused during the trial on Mr Manafort’s obvious wealth and although the judge pointed out that  “it isn’t a crime to have a lot of money,” they claimed that his extravagant lifestyle was due to his crimes – specifically his bank and tax fraud.  They claimed he had 31  foreign bank accounts in three countries and was using them to evade millions in taxes, asking the jury to question why someone would need 31 foreign bank accounts for legal reasons.  Manafort had been partly implicated in court by his former colleague Rick Gates – who was also a former Trump campaign staffer.  Mr Gates admitted embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars from Manafort and helping his boss commit tax fraud.


Mr Manafort’s sentencing date has not yet been set but as he contested the charges and has now been found guilty he could in theory be looking at up to 80 years in prison.  In reality it seems more likely he will serve around ten years.  His woes, however,  are far from over.  He may face a retrial on the charges the jury could not reach a verdict on.  This may depend on what information the prosecution can gleam from speaking to the jurors and why they were deadlocked on the 10 failed charges.  Manafort also faces another trial in Washington DC next month for money laundering, acting as an unregistered foreign agent, conspiracy to defraud the U.S., making false statements and witness tampering.  This Washington trial is far more consequential and makes up  the actual bulk of the case against Manafort.  The defence had insisted on two separate trials as they believed they had a better chance of an acquittal on the charges brought in Virginia.  This has clearly backfired. 


Mr Manafort may be hoping for a Presidential pardon. Although he has so far only been convicted on federal charges for which the President can pardon him he is still facing some state charges at next month’s trial and for these the President has no power of pardon.  Mr Manafort may come to the conclusion that he now needs to begin cooperating with investigators in order to reduce the time he is going to spend in prison.  The prosecution now has to decide whether to try him again on the 10 failed charges, with some commentators saying that this may be unlikely as the prosecution already has convictions which will send Manafort to prison for a long time.  There is also the possibility, if Manafort begins cooperating, that next month’s trial could even be dropped.

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The judge in the Manafort case in Virginia has received death threats and is now under U.S. Marshal Service protection.  It is not clear if these threats are from people supporting Mr Manafort or even from people opposed to him who are angry with the judge who has repeatedly made an effort to be ultra fair to the defence.  Some commentators suggest this is simply an effort by the judge to be seen to be fair and therefore reduce the risk of Manafort’s lawyers being able to successfully argue at a possible appeal that the trial was unfair.  The judge has also decided to keep the names of the jurors secret for their own protection.


Mr Manafort’s trial was not about the Russian collusion allegations and the subject of Mr Trump was not brought up  during the trial.  Instead it dealt with Mr Manafort’s political consulting with pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine prior to his role with the Trump campaign.  The Ukrainian government found documents pledging more than $12m in cash to Manafort his advisory work with former President Viktor Yanukovych while he was still president of the Ukraine.  It was also claimed that Manafort worked for a Russian billionaire to aid Russian President Vladimir Putin to achieve certain political goals in other parts of the former Soviet Union.


Although Mr Manafort’s trial is not directly related to the Russian collusion allegations it is an important milestone for the Mueller investigation.  The Special Counsel was under considerable pressure to secure its first conviction and had this trial failed then it would have given tremendous support to those who are trying to derail the Mueller investigation and those who say it is a waste of time and resources.  Although less than half of the charges against Manafort have come to a conviction the guilty verdict on eight counts against Trump’s former campaign manager adds to the growing list of successes in the Mueller investigation.  These include numerous indictments of Russian individuals and companies and plea deals with Trump campaign officials George Papadopolous, Michael Flynn and Rick Gates and with London lawyer Alex van der Zwaan and computer programmer Richard Pinedo.


News about Michael Flynn came out yesterday, although it was partly buried by the news from the two court cases.  Michael Flynn was Trump’s National Security advisor and he has admitted lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russian officials during the Trump campaign.  He is known to be cooperating with the Mueller investigation and this is still ongoing.  Indeed, it is so ongoing that Flynn’s sentencing has been delayed yet again.  It was announced yesterday that “Due to the the status of the investigation, the Special Counsel’s office does not believe that this matter is ready to be scheduled for a sentencing hearing at this time.”  This is another sign of progress in the Mueller investigation and that possibly more damaging allegations or information will be revealed when Flynn is finally sentenced.


Mr Trump must be sweating at the prospect of more damaging allegations against him emerging from the cooperation, or potential cooperation, of Manafort, Flynn, Cohen and others and this is why the President has been so persistent in his attacks on Robert Mueller and the so-called “gang of Democrat thugs” running the Russian investigation.  This of course is not the case as many of the top people in the investigation, including Mueller, are Republicans.  Mr Trump has been trying to find a way to dismiss Robert Mueller for some time.  He has the power to sack him if he wishes but he has wisely avoided this – so far.  To do so would simply lead to the appointment by the Justice Department of a new Special Counsel who would no doubt see the firing of Mueller as a reason to double-down on the investigation.  Why would you sack the Special Counsel if, as Trump repeatedly tells us, he has done nothing wrong?   Of course, he would say that it was a witch-hunt against him that had to be stopped but does anyone beyond his base supporters really believe that?  The firing of Mueller would also create a constitutional crisis that could alienate many Republicans in Congress against him and perhaps even hasten impeachment proceedings.


Beyond the Russian investigation and the trial against Manafort and the plea deal by Cohen, more ex-Trump political supporters are in hot water.  Their dilemmas may not have anything directly to do with Trump but they demonstrate his repeated ability to employ people completely unsuited – whether morally or otherwise – for roles in an Administration or to have association with.  Two weeks ago Chris Collins of New York, who was the first member of the House of Representatives to endorse Mr Trump’s presidential bid, was indicted for insider trading and yesterday, Duncan Hunter – the second Congressman to come out in support of Mr Trump – was charged with using campaign funds for personal expenses, including trips for his family to Hawaii and Italy.  It seems clearer by the day that those around Mr Trump are increasingly being seen to be part of the “swamp” that Mr Trump so vehemently pledged to “drain” if he came of office.


In the Senate yesterday, Democrat Elizabeth Warren in an impressive and impassioned speech  brought forward a sweeping programme of political reform measures she said were needed to address political corruption in Washington DC.  They include a ban on all lobbying by former top government officials,  a prohibition of all members of Congress and White House staff from holding individual corporate stocks and a requirement that all presidential and vice-presidential candidates disclose eight years of tax returns.  Warren is no doubt hoping that a platform of such promised reforms will help the Democrats take control of Congress in the mid-terms as similar plans did for them in 2006.  Mr Trump demonstrated in 2016 that such calls for “draining the swamp” were popular – although in his case it was just talk – and such promises also helped the Republicans take Congress in 1994.


In a press conference this afternoon White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders repeatedly answered reporters questions by simply saying over-and-over again that the President did nothing wrong and that there were no charges against him.  She implied that just because Mr Cohen made a plea deal it does not mean what he said was true – implying that Mr Cohen was lying to secure a plea deal.  In reality, Mr Cohen was under no obligation to say that Mr Trump was involved and his claim against Mr Trump was not in the official court papers related to his plea deal. Ms Sanders also deflected a question on whether the President would pardon Paul Manafort by saying that Mr Manafort’s case had nothing to do with Mr Trump or the White House, but elaborated that Mr Trump had said he had not thought about it.

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