Michael Cohen Deals a Blow to His Former Boss

President Trump’s former, longtime personal lawyer directly implicated him in a federal crime

The conviction of his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort on tax evasion and bank fraud charges undercut Mr. Trump’s assertion that his was a campaign and a presidency that would “drain the swamp” of the unsavory professional political class.

Mr. Manafort was and is of precisely that political class. The actions for which he was convicted had nothing to do with his work for the president, yet the optics are, to say the least, unhelpful for Mr. Trump.

Mr. Trump can and will distance himself from both Mr. Manafort and the felonies of which he now has been convicted. Indeed, after landing in West Virginia for a campaign rally, Mr. Trump expressed sympathy for Mr. Manafort but said “this has nothing to do with Russian collusion.” He continued to describe the hunt for a Russian connection as a “witch hunt.”

It will be much harder to create distance from Mr. Cohen.

.. For Mr. Trump and his presidency, there are a few silver linings in that dark cloud. One is that Mr. Cohen apparently doesn’t have an agreement to cooperate with prosecutors or special counsel Robert Mueller. So his brief statement in court may be all that is heard on the matter.The second is that, by agreeing to a plea deal, Mr. Cohen guaranteed there won’t be a trial in which his assertion can be hashed out in detail and in full public view.

Finally, campaign-finance violations can seem to voters to be obscure and of concern mostly to the distant political class.