- 22 Aug 2018 09:59
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https://www.politico.eu/article/its-the-only-excuse-theyll-need-legal-blows-fuel-impeachment-fears-paul-manafort-michael-cohen/
IF I HAD UNDERSTOOD THE SITUATION A BIT BETTER I SHOULD HAVE PROBABLY JOINED THE ANARCHISTSGeorge Orwell
President Donald Trump and his allies were armed with a quick response to former campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s guilty verdict — it had nothing to do with Russian collusion, and nothing to do with Trump.
But Michael Cohen’s simultaneous bombshell guilty plea on Tuesday, in which he admitted paying hush money to women just before the 2016 election at Trump’s direction, pose a greater risk to the president.
“The verdict in the Manafort trial isn’t nearly as worrisome to me as the Cohen agreement and the Cohen statement,” said former Trump adviser Michael Caputo. “It’s probably the worst thing so far in this whole investigation stage of the presidency.”
One Republican lawyer close to the White House worried that Cohen — with his unique access to Trump’s history of business dealings and scandalous personal entanglements — could ultimately prove more damaging to Trump, and give Democrats fodder for impeachment if they take the House in November. “It’s the only excuse they’ll need,” the lawyer said. “And believe me, they won’t need much of an excuse.”
The sheer force of the two stories breaking within minutes of each other left an unavoidable impression that the walls are closing in on a president facing serious accusations of wrongdoing, leaving some to worry what Trump will do next.
One former administration official said there’s a “very high” likelihood that the president – who increasingly feels under attack from all sides – will do something erratic that could make an already bad situation worse.
The Manafort and Cohen news came after an already difficult week for the president, who was also grappling with a blockbuster story in The New York Times revealing that Trump’s White House counsel, Don McGahn, is cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, fearing that he was being set up to take the fall for any acts of obstruction.
On Tuesday, a grand jury also indicted California Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter, one of Trump’s first two congressional endorsers, on charges of improperly using campaign funds to pay for personal expenses, including vacations and dental work. Earlier this month, Trump’s other earliest endorser, New York Republican Rep. Chris Collins, was charged with securities fraud. He’s pleaded not guilty.
Trump sought to minimize the impact of the negative news and cast the developments as irrelevant to his presidency, while also again questioning the web of investigations stemming from Mueller’s probe.
“This has nothing to do with Russian collusion,” Trump told reporters Tuesday on his way to an event in West Virginia. “This is a witch hunt, and it’s a disgrace.”
Tuesday’s blockbuster news made the impeachment threat more real than ever.
But nearly a dozen people close to the president, including current and former White House aides, acknowledged that Tuesday was one of the darkest days of Trump’s year and a half in office. And they worried that the revelations — even if they are unrelated to allegations of collusion with Russia — could lend new credence to the Mueller probe, even after the president’s allies spent months undercutting public faith in the investigation.
“There was political momentum building to wrap up the Mueller probe soon,” the former administration official said. “At the very least, in the short term, these two developments will pretty significantly bolster the office of the special counsel and people’s perceptions of it.”
The prospect of an impeachment attempt by Democrats has increasingly been on the mind of many in Trump’s inner circle, who have used the threat as a rallying call to rally Republican voters ahead of the midterms. Some close to the president have even argued that a partisan impeachment effort could be a good thing for Trump’s re-election prospects in 2020.
https://www.politico.eu/article/its-the-only-excuse-theyll-need-legal-blows-fuel-impeachment-fears-paul-manafort-michael-cohen/
IF I HAD UNDERSTOOD THE SITUATION A BIT BETTER I SHOULD HAVE PROBABLY JOINED THE ANARCHISTSGeorge Orwell