We can be grateful for some unlikely gifts this week. We’re lucky, as it turns out, that U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III was so sharp in criticizing prosecutors in the Manafort case that an upset lead attorney, Greg Andres, protested at one point, “The court interrupts every single one of the government’s [direct questions], every single one.” After Ellis’s interjections, it will be difficult for Trump’s defenders to argue that the trial was biased in favor of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and his team.
We’re probably fortunate, too, that the jury reached a split verdict, convicting Manafort on eight of 18 counts. Reportedly because of one holdout juror, the panel was not unanimously convinced by the entire case presented by the government. For a divided America, this outcome ought to evoke our national icon of justice — blindfolded and holding a balance in her hand to weigh the evidence fairly.
And however odd it seems, we should celebrate the fact that Cohen, the man who did Trump’s legal dirty work for so many years, decided that he wanted to cop a plea — and, in the process, to present himself as a man seeking to serve his country by telling the truth at last about his former boss.
.. But interestingly, Russia does figure in Cohen’s motivations, according to Davis: After watching Trump support Russian President Vladimir Putin against U.S. intelligence agencies at the news conference following the Helsinki summit, Cohen “worried about the future of the country with somebody who was aligning himself with Mr. Putin,” Davis told NBC on Wednesday.
As Trump’s world collapses around him, the danger for the country arguably increases. Trump could lash out at his tormentors, reasoning that a constitutional crisis is his only possible salvation; the partisan fever in America could spike even further, with angry people on both sides taking to the streets; and foreign adversaries could seek to exploit our troubles.
.. For Republicans, there is a last chance over these next two months to finally show some guts and principle by separating themselves from Trump.
Trump Decries Law Enforcement Tactic of ‘Flipping’ Criminal Defendants
In Fox News interview, president also attacks Attorney General Jeff Sessions: ‘What kind of man is this?’
Mr. Trump voiced disdain for “flipping,” saying that people lie to prosecutors about “whoever the next-highest one is,” so that they can get more lenient terms.
“I’ve seen it many times,” he said. “I’ve had many friends involved in this stuff. It’s called flipping and it almost ought to be illegal.”
.. Peter Zeidenberg, a former federal prosecutor, said that Mr. Trump’s comments amount to “an absolutely outrageous statement and to any prosecutor would just be shocking to hear.”
“It’s hard to overstate how fundamental” to prosecutions cooperating witnesses are, Mr. Zeidenberg said. Noting the president praised his former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, for not seeking a plea deal in his tax- and bank-fraud trial, he said, “He doesn’t talk like a president. He talks like a crime boss.”
.. “Trump’s idea would effectively demolish one of the basic and valuable tools of criminal law enforcement in the U.S.,” said Stephen Gillers, a professor at the New York University School of Law.
.. Mr. Trump said that Mr. Cohen, who has described himself as the president’s “fixer,” was a lawyer who “didn’t do big deals” but “did small deals.”
“Not somebody that was with me that much,” he said.
.. “For 30, 40 years I’ve been watching flippers,” he said. “Everything is wonderful and then they get 10 years in jail and they flip on whoever the next highest one is, or as high as you can go….It’s not fair.”
.. In the Fox News interview, Mr. Trump suggested that Democrats still have great sway over the Justice Department, which is now led by his appointees. He suggested that his annoyance with Mr. Sessions stems in part from the Justice Department’s failure to prosecute his 2016 election opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton, over her email practices when she served as secretary of state.
.. “Even my enemies say that ‘Jeff Sessions should have told you that he was going to recuse himself, and then you wouldn’t have put him in.’ He took the job, and then he said I’m going to recuse myself,” Mr. Trump said.
Why Michael Cohen Agreed to Plead Guilty—And Implicate the President
Prosecutors had reams of evidence and a long list of counts, which also could have included the lawyer’s wife
For weeks, the president had been distancing himself from Mr. Cohen, including by stopping paying his longtime attorney’s legal fees, making clear amid the pressure that he was on his own.
Under oath on Tuesday, before a packed courtroom, Mr. Cohen created a spectacular moment without parallel in American history when he confessed to two crimes that he said he committed at the behest of the man who would become president.
.. For the president, it opens up a perilous new legal front.
.. Mr. Trump denied he directed Mr. Cohen to buy the women’s silence. Contradicting earlier statements, the president said he became aware of the payments to the women “later on” and said Mr. Cohen was reimbursed from his personal funds, not his 2016 campaign coffers.
.. On April 5, days before the raids, Mr. Trump told reporters on Air Force One he didn’t know about the payment to Ms. Clifford, and referred questions about the matter to Mr. Cohen. “You’ll have to ask Michael Cohen,” Mr. Trump said. “Michael is my attorney.”
Mr. Cohen, who that night was staying aboard the yacht of Trump donor Franklin Haney, which was docked in Miami, grew irate on the ship soon after Mr. Trump made his remarks distancing himself from the Clifford payment, according to a person familiar with the episode. Mr. Cohen was swearing loudly as others on the boat were sipping their drinks, the person said.
.. Initially, Mr. Cohen seemed unlikely to turn on the president. Although their relationship was at times turbulent, Mr. Trump appreciated Mr. Cohen’s absolute loyalty. On the day of the raids, Mr. Trump called the move a “disgrace” and a “witch hunt.”
Soon after the April raids, Mr. Cohen’s relationship with Mr. Trump began to deteriorate.
The estrangement began over legal bills, said a person who has spoken with Mr. Cohen about the matter. The Trump family covered part of Mr. Cohen’s legal fees after the raids, but then stopped paying.
Mr. Cohen felt exposed. Public comments by Rudy Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s lawyer, put distance between the president and Mr. Cohen and further alienated the attorney, the person said.
Mr. Cohen told associates and friends he felt Mr. Trump didn’t have his back and vented that the president hadn’t personally offered to pay his legal bills in the Manhattan investigation, which he said were “bankrupting” him... By then, prosecutors and the Internal Revenue Service had focused on Mr. Cohen’s personal income taxes. In conversations with a potential witness in June and July, investigators asked “very pointed” questions about various tax filings, according to a person familiar with the conversations.“They knew what they wanted, they knew what they had, and they went after it,” the person said.
In late June, Mr. Cohen openly broke with Mr. Trump.
.. Mr. Cohen’s father urged him not to protect the president, saying he didn’t survive the Holocaust to have his name sullied by Mr. Trump.. On June 20, Mr. Cohen stepped down from his position as the Republican National Committee’s deputy finance chairman and tweeted his first public criticism of his former boss: “As the son of a Polish holocaust survivor, the images and sounds of this family separation policy [are] heart wrenching.” The tweet no longer appears on Mr. Cohen’s Twitter account... In July, a recording became public that Mr. Cohen surreptitiously made of a conversation he had with Mr. Trump in September 2016 about buying the rights to Ms. McDougal’s story. The president has denied the affair.The president’s legal team had waived attorney-client privilege on the recording, which had been seized in the April 9 raids... Given the Justice Department’s policy of not indicting sitting presidents, a guilty plea from Mr. Cohen and his public implication of Mr. Trump were among the strongest outcomes prosecutors could have hoped for
.. For prosecutors, the guilty plea meant they could avoid a contentious trial and free up resources to pursue other investigations... one of Mr. Cohen’s lawyers, Lanny Davis, appeared on cable news shows to say Mr. Cohen wouldn’t accept a pardon from Mr. Trump and “is more than happy to tell the special counsel all that he knows.”
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.