The vortex of corruption swirling around Donald Trump took an interesting spin Tuesday with both the conviction of Paul Manafort on eight counts of fraud and the plea deal entered into by Michael Cohen, also on eight counts, the last two of which involve campaign fund violations.
Counts 7 and 8 implicate the Trump campaign, which did not include these contributions in their FEC filings. https://t.co/9Rc5IoRFqb
— Gabriel Malor (@gabrielmalor) August 21, 2018
Cohen has pleaded guilty to an offense directly related to Trump’s 2016 campaign and that’s bad for Trump. Washington Post:
Even worse for Trump, it’s an offense in which he was at least tangentially involved and to which he has increasingly been tied (in contradiction to his early denials). That places Trump much closer to actual wrongdoing than at any previous point in the Russia probe and related investigations.
“That’s potentially very bad news for Trump, because if he knew about the payments in advance or even agreed to them later, he’s looking at liability as a conspirator for what is now a proven crime,” said former Justice Department aide Harry Litman. […]
“I do think a plea to paying the women moves the overall case forward in the sense that if campaign money was used to make the payments, anyone involved in that [including, in theory, then-candidate Trump] is guilty of a campaign fraud,” former federal prosecutor Patrick J. Cotter said. “Thus, more potential witnesses and targets will result from Cohen’s plea.”
Legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin told CNN it is difficult to fathom that prosecutors would strike this kind of deal with someone like Cohen and then never again question him. Typically, federal investigators will offer a plea deal in return for information about a “bigger fish,” said Toobin, though he noted it is not yet clear that would automatically be Trump.
Trump and his team have long — and loudly — denied his 2016 campaign colluded or had illegal contacts with the Russian government or other Russians. But that’s not what the U.S. attorney was looking at when it came to Cohen.
And that means his admitting campaign finance violations raises the possibility he already has told federal investigators — maybe even Mueller — about illicit actions Trump’s campaign took during the last presidential election cycle. If the campaign violated campaign finance laws and Trump was involved, his former “fixer” likely knew about it.
“The fact that Michael Cohen is pleading guilty is just an enormous development in the history of the Trump Presidency,” Toobin said. “Almost no one knows more of his secrets.”
The Cohen plea is a watershed event.
