Manafort/Cohen Go Down: The Day America Struck Back

Mod: When they write the history of our troubled times, yesterday will go down as a major turning point. The Trumplers can howl about "witch hunts" all that they want, but the first verdicts are now in, and Robt. Mueller has won a crushing victory for us all. 

Paul Manafort Found Guilty In First Trial Test Of Mueller Probe (Huffington Post link): Paul Manafort, President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman, was found guilty on Tuesday on eight counts including five tax fraud charges he faced at trial here. However, the judge declared a mistrial on 10 other charges that Manafort, 69, faced in connection with allegations of tax and bank fraud after jurors could not reach a consensus on them.

Jurors heard extensive testimony about Manafort’s tax-free spending on luxury goods and efforts to defraud banks. The verdict came after the jury had indicated earlier in the day that they were deadlocked on at least one count.

In addition to the guilty verdict on five tax fraud charges, the jury found Manafort responsible for two counts of bank fraud and one count of failing to report foreign bank and financial accounts.

Manafort faces a maximum of 80 years in prison from the eight charges he was found guilty of Tuesday. The verdict marked yet another victory for the special counsel team being led by Robert Mueller, which faced its first trial after securing a string of guilty pleas from Trump campaign associates.

Michael Cohen pleads guilty, implicates Trump (CNN link): Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump's former personal attorney, pleaded guilty in Manhattan federal court Tuesday to eight criminal counts, admitting that "in coordination and at the direction of a candidate for federal office" he acted to keep information that would have been harmful to the candidate and the campaign from becoming public during the 2016 election cycle.

The charges against Cohen, an attorney for Trump until earlier this year and a member of his inner circle throughout his presidential campaign, bring an end to a months-long investigation by the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York. And they expose, through the criminal information filed against Cohen in court, that he acted with Trump and his allies, including David Pecker, the CEO of the National Enquirer's publisher, American Media Inc., to suppress potentially damaging claims against the now-President.

Though Trump himself isn't named, the court filing refers to an Individual-1, who by January 2017 had become president of the United States.

The counts against Cohen included tax fraud, false statements to a bank and campaign finance violations tied to his work for Trump, including payments Cohen made or helped orchestrate that were designed to silence women who claimed affairs with the then-candidate.

Though not named in the plea deal filed in court, the women whom Cohen helped silence were two who have since gone public with their claims of sexual encounters or affairs with Trump: a porn star named Stephanie Clifford, who goes by the stage name Stormy Daniels, and a former Playboy model named Karen McDougal. Trump has denied the claims.

Trump is powerless as his legal fate spins out of his control (CNN Politics link): President Donald Trump may no longer control his fate, a plight that helps explain his increasingly volcanic Twitter eruptions. Trump's persona -- in politics, business and life -- relies on his self-image as the guy who calls the shots, closes deals and forces others to react to the shock moves of a master narrative weaver.

But as a legal web closes around the President, he's in a far weaker position than he would like, a situation especially underlined by the bombshell revelations that White House counsel Donald McGahn has spent 30 hours in interviews with special counsel Robert Mueller.

Trump reacted to a media frenzy over the McGahn revelations in characteristic fashion: by launching a new Twitter assault on Mueller, taking new shots at his new nemesis John Brennan and diverting attention with newsy comments on the Federal Reserve.

But sources told CNN on Monday that the President was unsettled that he didn't know the full extent of McGahn's testimony and had remained agitated through the weekend, believing the latest developments made him look weak.

Trump's company approved $420,000 in payments to Cohen, relying on 'sham' invoices, prosecutors say (MSN link): President Trump’s real estate company authorized paying $420,000 to lawyer Michael Cohen in his effort to silence women during the presidential campaign and then relied on “sham” invoices from Cohen that concealed the nature of the payments, according to legal filings released Tuesday. The payments began flowing in February 2017, soon after Trump took office, when Cohen approached Trump Organization executives seeking to be reimbursed for “election-related” expenses, prosecutors said.

That included a $130,000 payment Cohen had made to adult-film star Stormy Daniels so she would remain silent about an alleged affair with Trump, according to the court documents. Trump executives decided Cohen should be paid more than he sought — an additional $360,000 for expenses and other fees and taxes, plus a $60,000 bonus, prosecutors said.

The involvement of Trump’s company in the hush-money payments has been previously reported, but Tuesday’s documents, released as part of Cohen’s plea deal with federal prosecutors, offered the most detailed accounting yet of the payments and the machinations inside the president’s company over how they were made.

Omarosa Says Trump Asked Cohen To Protect Him From Melania (Politicus USA link): Trump’s bad day gets even worse as Omarosa dropped a new tape and told Chris Matthews that Trump asked Michael Cohen to protect him from his wife.

 After playing the tape of Cohen aboard Trump’s campaign plane in September 2016, Chris Matthews asked Omarosa, “Do you know the president told him to lie for the purpose of paying off those women that it was really a campaign contribution?” Omarosa answered, “I can’t say if he asked him to lie, but he certainly asked him to protect Donald Trump, to protect him from his wife and the country and help him get elected.”

Omarosa brought up an interesting point. Trump wasn’t just using Cohen to win an election. He was also trying to protect himself from his wife finding out about his affairs. Trump likes to pretend like he is a strong man, but a real strong man would never cheat on his wife. Only a truly weak and insecure man would cheat like Trump has and then go to the lengths that he did to cover it up.

Michael Cohen is going to jail in part because Donald Trump is afraid of his wife and too immature to face the consequences of his own actions. Trump tried to hide his affairs from his wife and the entire country, and resulting criminal conspiracy could run him out of office and send him to prison.

Donald Trump Impeachment Odds Surge Following Michael Cohen Plea Deal, Paul Manafort Verdict (Newsweek link): Betting enthusiasts jumped into action Tuesday following an extraordinary afternoon in which President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney pleaded guilty to eight charges, including campaign finance violations, and his former campaign chairman was found guilty on eight fraud charges. In the immediate aftermath of the simultaneous legal blockbusters, the odds on Trump being impeached before his first terms is over saw a significant surge.

On political prediction market PredictIt, the price on Trump being impeached rose five points, to 45 cents. The site allows users to buy “shares” and if the outcome comes true, all those who brought yes shares will get $1 back per share. The shares on Trump’s impeachment have not closed at a price that high in at least three months.

It was not only that Cohen, who described himself as operating as a “fixer” for Trump over more than a decade, pleaded guilty. Cohen directly implicated the president when stating in court that Trump directed him to make a payment to Stormy Daniels to ensure her silence about an alleged affair shortly before the 2016 election.

Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, was paid $130,000 for the purpose, Cohen said, of influencing the election. While Trump originally denied that he knew about the payment, it later emerged that he reimbursed Cohen. The charges against Cohen also included arranging a payment to Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model who similarly claims she had an affair with Trump a decade earlier.

All the President’s Crooks (The New York Times link): From the start of the Russia investigation, President Trump has been working to discredit the work and the integrity of the special counsel, Robert Mueller; praising men who are blatant grifters, cons and crooks; insisting that he’s personally done nothing wrong; and reminding us that he hires only the best people.

On Tuesday afternoon, the American public was treated to an astonishing split-screen moment involving two of those people, as Mr. Trump’s former campaign chief was convicted by a federal jury in Virginia of multiple crimes carrying years in prison at the same time that his longtime personal lawyer pleaded guilty in federal court in New York to his own lengthy trail of criminality, and confessed that he had committed at least some of the crimes “at the direction of” Mr. Trump himself.

Let that sink in: Mr. Trump’s own lawyer has now accused him, under oath, of committing a felony.

Only a complete fantasist — that is, only President Trump and his cult — could continue to claim that this investigation of foreign subversion of an American election, which has already yielded dozens of other indictments and several guilty pleas, is a “hoax” or “scam” or “rigged witch hunt.”

Mod: One more. So who was it that chose Mike Pence to be Trump's Vice President?

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