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Breaking: Manafort Found Guilty on 8 of 18 Counts, Cohen Pleads Guilty to 8 Counts
Paul Manafort, the former campaign chairman for candidate Donald Trump, was facing 18 criminal counts. The jury found him guilty on eight of the counts, which included five counts of tax fraud, two counts of bank fraud, and one count of failure to disclose a foreign bank account. The jury said that they could not reach consensus on 10 of the counts, so those were declared a mistrial.
At about the same time the Manafort verdict came in, Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, pleaded guilty to eight counts. He admitted that he paid a pornographic actress for her silence during the 2016 presidential campaign and pleaded guilty to multiple charges of bank and tax fraud.
JUST IN: Cohen tells court under oath that he violated campaign law *at the direction* of the candidate, Donald Trump; says he acted for the purpose of influencing the election, @CNN/@Reuters report.
— Mark Albert (@malbertnews) August 21, 2018
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Published in General
Absent recordings of some sort it would seem extremely difficult to prove intent here, Trump could simply make the claim that this is his standard operating procedure for dealing with his affairs. If I recall correctly there are multiple examples where he has paid women off, giving him a clear pattern of behavior he can point to.
I’m on board. Manafort is a crook so he goes to jail. Trump campaign pays a fine and we all move on.
The larger point is Cohen is pleading out to the “campaign violations” as part of his plea deal in an attempt to minimize his sentence(ie: jail time/restitution/fines) for his actual crimes(ie: large dollar tax evasion) . If the Feds only had the “campaign violations” there would be no or an exceptionally weak case to made against Cohen
It all depends on whether the democrats have anything to offer other than the “I” word, and whether they overstep with their sabre rattling enough to motivate Republican turnout.
Moderator Note:
Please play the ball, not the man.Didn’t you vote for Hillary? How much truth was discovered in smashed blackberrys?Finally, you guys get it!
But this is Trump. Who went on Lester Holt’s show and said he fired Comey over Russia. I’m sure he will say something incriminating on this sooner rather than later. The Rudy and Huckabee will start the gaslighting process to cover for him.
You know, other than a general revulsion to giving the Democrats a “win”, I just can’t seem to get too worked up.
Trump’s less than honorable. We already knew that. Hell, we knew that back in the ’80s.
Most presidential campaigns are probably guilty of some sort of campaign finance violations, as has already been noted. Trump supporters will point to this selective enforcement as yet another double standard by the Democrats, media, and D.C. establishment. Trump haters will use this as evidence that Trump is even worse than they’ve been saying. This is all as predictable as the dawn and thus, mostly meaningless.
Whatever Trump did or didn’t do should theoretically have little effect on the mid-terms, but few “independent” voters are rational enough to separate the President from whoever is running for their local congressional representative. If this blows up into a true scandal, it’s still early enough for congressional candidates to rhetorically distance themselves from Trump, and hopefully mitigate the damage somewhat.
We’ll continue to hear grumbling about how Trump is degrading the office of the President, or some-such. To this I say, “Good. The office needs to be taken down a few pegs.” The presidency isn’t supposed to be an elected kingship, nor a papacy, nor a super-legislature. The Congress is supposed to be the primary seat of national power. The more people who become aware of the dangers of the power that is currently concentrated in the Executive, the better.
If the Democrats win the House, they’ll immediately begin impeachment proceedings. Unless a lot more comes out about Trump, they’ll never get the votes in the Senate to remove him, even if he’s impeached. Even if they do, we end up with President Pence. I can think of worse things.
I think I’ll just lay in a supply of popcorn and Dos Equis from Costco and watch the fireworks.
I’ll break the news to President Romney and Vice President Ryan.
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And I always thought that military service meant something too.
McCain lost to Obama.
Kerry lost to Bush.
Gore lost to Bush.
Dole and Perot lost to Clinton
George H. W. Bush and Perot lost to Clinton
Carter lost to Reagan.
A lot of military people have run for Congress and lost.
…
I always thought people wanted to reduce the national debt. That doesn’t work out either.
Why is executing a NDA a violation of campaign finance law if the money did not come from his campaign and it was to settle an alleged matter that happened years before he was a candidate? You can call it hush money or anything you like. It’s an NDA and apparently they’re very common.
You want fake news. I got fake news
That’s the sub-headline of the NBC story linked to by Drudge. Have they no shame?
I’m not sure that matters. Candidate all sign their FEC reports attesting to their truthfulness.
As for D’Souza his violation was straw donations.
Logan act! Details: (1) he calls ambassador of another country as part of his job with incoming administration (2) Obama administration uses NSA eavesdropping to find evidence of Logan Act (non-)violation.
Think I’ll skip this thread…
When I heard that both Manafort was convicted and Cohen had pled guilty AND that the president is on the stump tonight, I immediately expected to hear him pardon them both from the podium.
But then I got into this “Thought experiment”:
I agree that plausible grounds existed for the prosecutions. Manafort certainly engaged in tax fraud, a crime for which defendants routinely serve a couple years’ imprisonment, not decades, and had nothing to do with Trump. Most of what Cohen pled to also had nothing to do with Trump except the one key statement was he did something “at the direction of a candidate.”
What if, going forward, President Trump were to commute the sentences of Cohen and Manafort? Presumably, right after winning a second term.
This would leave their convictions in place but spare them from or reduce their prison time (a la Scooter Libby).
In recognition of their having been prosecuted primarily due to their having been associated with Trump, is this a better approach than a pardon? Or is even this weak sauce that would simply feed the
howling mobmedia frenzy?Sally Yates could not have put it better!
By the way, why isn’t she being prominently mentioned in all of the analyses? She’s the one who engineered the whole Flynn-Logan Act fraud.
Sincerely, Jim
Well, Sally did make the president’s “little list” (h/t to Gilbert & Sullivan) of potential losers of security clearances, so there’s that.
Well if this turns into a major issue for Trump, character will have mattered. It clearly doesn’t matter in the voting booth, but I still think it matters to this administration who could pursue more good policy if not for the clown at the helm.
Missing in the comments is the other conviction. For his dastardly deeds, the Arwan guy got time served. But of course. Can’t pursue anyone who would make Democrats look bad.
Well if you want to argue about what Trump might say I have nothing for you, his picture should be in the dictionary next to the phrase “off the cuff”.
It bothers me that a representative paid hush money. It bothers me more to see discretionary investigation and prosecution used as political weapons… typically against Republicans.
What a difference five and a half yearas makes:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DlKWfv-WsAUPpGH?format=jpg
Thank you for defending a very fine man. He also was brought into the Trump Administration as one way of Trump attempting to show how his would be a bipartisan administration, as Flynn was a life long Democrat.
But the Left tends to eat its own, as often as they can. Even if in doing so, they weaken not only an Administration but their very own nation.
Its been my opinion that the Mueller suborned perjury in the Flynn Plea Agreement, and should be disbarred and indicted.
I am inclined to believe that Manafort probably committed something, but his prosecution was selective and malicious.
I am inclined to believe that Cohen was up to his eyeballs in this taxi medallion thing, and was going to go down eventually, and his prosecution is probably fair.
In any event, intent can be inferred from the circumstances.
I’m not sure about federal campaign finance law, but misstatements are general only criminal if they are material and made deliberately. Also, I doubt Obama signed his reports himself. It was probably someone on the campaign committee.
As for what Obama’s campaign did (this might have been a separate incident from the one they were fined for, but this one sticks out in my memory clearer):
If I remember correctly, the controversy was not over the money not being reported, but over the donor’s information not being tracked properly. Donor information for donations below a certain amount does not have to be reported, but it still has to be collected to track whether the donations from one person in the aggregate exceed the the minimum amount and have to be reported. The Obama campaign was deliberately avoiding collecting information on the small credit card donations, which made it possible for an individual to make aggregate donations above both the reportable contribution limit and the overall individual contribution limit without his information being reported. Theoretically, all $3.9 million (or whatever the number was) in donations could have come from one person and the Obama campaign would have deliberately been unable to tell. I remember there being concern that this arrangement was enabling foreigners to donate as well.
Another important issue all of this brings up is that the dividing line between a deliberate misstatement and a more innocent one is in the eye of the beholder. It can be a situation were a jury is left to guess which story to believe in “he said, xir said” situation or a situation where intent is inferred from the circumstances without any direct evidence provided. This is why we should be hesitant to infer that a guilty plea always means guilt. It could mean the defendant wanted to avoid a trial that would essentially be a coin flip. This is what Rudy Giuliani was getting at the the “truth is not truth” comment. Most people – especially other lawyers – should understand this, which is why I generally assume that anyone who claims to not understand the point is being disingenuous.
I hope this doesn’t get a moderator comment, but it is quite interesting to see which members have yet to comment on this thread :)
One guy in particular might just be on a sea cruise and thus the silence.
No doubt the prosecution in the John Edwards case thought the same and this seems more tenuous than that. Certainly an opportunity for some eager young prosecutor, whether to be the grand hope of the “resistance” or to fall flat on his face time will tell.
Married men consorting with whores should always bother us. Although that does seem par for the course in D.C. these days.