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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 22, 2018
Trump lashes out at Cohen, Manafort news
Defendants played
prominent roles in
Trump’s political rise
By ZEKE MILLER, JONATHAN
LEMIRE and DARLENE SUPERVILLE
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Facing a growing threat
to his presidency, President Donald Trump
lashed out today at his former personal lawyer
Michael Cohen, a day after the onetime “fixer”
implicated Trump in a campaign cover-up to buy
the silence of women who said they had sexual
relationships with him.
Trump on accused Cohen of making up “sto-
ries in order to get a ‘deal’” from federal pros-
ecutors. Cohen pleaded guilty to campaign
finance violations that the lawyer said he carried
out in coordination with Trump.
“If anyone is looking for a good lawyer, I
would strongly suggest that you don’t retain the
services of Michael Cohen!” Trump tweeted
today.
In a split television screen for the history
books, Cohen’s admission to the crimes in fed-
eral court in New York on Tuesday came at
nearly the same moment that Trump’s onetime
campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, was con-
victed by a jury in Virginia of financial misdeeds.
Manafort faces separate charges in September in
the District of Columbia that include acting as a
foreign agent.
The back-to-back blows resulted from the
work of special counsel Robert Mueller, who is
investigating Russia’s attempts to sway voters
in the 2016 election, including hacking Demo-
crats’ emails, whether the Trump campaign may
have cooperated, and if the president himself
obstructed justice in investigating both.
Trump denounced the probe again today on
Twitter as a “witch hunt.”
Cohen’s lawyer, Lanny Davis, said today that
Cohen has information “that would be of inter-
est” to the special counsel. Davis said Cohen is
not looking for a presidential pardon.
“My observation is that the topics relating to
hacking and the crime of hacking ... that there
are subjects that Michael Cohen could address
that would be of interest to the special counsel,”
Davis said in a series of television interviews.
Trump soon weighed in on Twitter, taking his
shot at Cohen and praising Manafort, saying he
has “such respect for a brave man!”
Manafort, Trump wrote, had “tremendous
pressure on him and, unlike Michael Cohen, he
refused to ‘break.’”
But there was no doubt that Cohen’s acknowl-
edgement of a coordinated payoff scheme puts
Trump’s presidency on the defensive.
“It’s going to be hard for the president to try
to discredit all this. It’s circling him,” said David
Weinstein, a former federal prosecutor who is
not involved in the case.
Cohen and Manafort played prominent roles
in Trump’s political rise in 2016.
Cohen said once he’d take a bullet for Trump,
and was intimately familiar with Trump’s per-
sonal, business and political dealing for more
than a decade. Cohen released a secretly recorded
audio of Trump discussing a payout made via a
third party to model Karen McDougal who says
she had a sexual relationship with Trump in 2006.
Cohen initially denied making the payments
AP Photo/Craig Ruttle
Michael Cohen, former personal lawyer to President Donald Trump, leaves federal court
Tuesday after reaching a plea agreement.
Dana Verkouteren
This courtroom sketch shows Paul Manafort listening to Judge T.S. Ellis III in federal
court Tuesday in Alexandria, Va.
‘It’s going to be hard for the president to
try to discredit all this. It’s circling him.’
David Weinstein
a former federal prosecutor who is not involved in the case.
to the women — McDougal and adult film
actress Stormy Daniels — or that Trump had any
knowledge of them. But he changed his story as
prosecutors closed in. Davis, his attorney, told
CNN today of Cohen, “There has been an evolu-
tion in his loyalty toward Donald Trump.”
The payments to the women could be
regarded as an illegal campaign expenditure if
the money was clearly meant to influence the
2016 election.
Trump, on Twitter, maintained otherwise,
saying, “Michael Cohen plead (sic) guilty to two
counts of campaign finance violations that are
not a crime.”
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He also complained that “President Obama
had a big campaign finance violation and it was
easily settled!” Trump was apparently referring
to a fine levied on the former president’s 2008
campaign over missing and delayed disclosure
of high-dollar donors in the final days of that
race.
In a deal with federal prosecutors, Cohen
pleaded guilty to eight counts, including tax eva-
sion. He could get about four to five years in
prison at sentencing Dec. 12.
Manafort was convicted of eight fel-
ony counts, including charges of filing false
tax returns and failing to report foreign bank
accounts. Prosecutors will decide whether to
retry him on 10 other charges.
Manafort was a well-connected Republi-
can consultant and lobbyist who prosecutors say
made $60 million in foreign money working for
Russia-backed politicians in Ukraine. He was
campaign chairman for months during the GOP
nomination battle in 2016.
Trump said Tuesday the legal developments
had nothing to do with Russian election interfer-
ence and that he felt “badly for both” men. At the
West Virginia rally, he focused on developments
on trade, taxes, North Korea and his plans for a
space force.
“Where is the collusion?” he asked.
His supporters chanted Trump’s campaign
staples “Drain the swamp!” and “Lock her up!”
The White House is trying to keep the focus
on the November election, when control of Con-
gress is at stake. Trump allies such as former
strategist Steve Bannon seek to frame the elec-
tion as a referendum on the potential impeach-
ment of the president. Trump confidants have
long argued that the president’s fate in such a
scenario would ultimately be more a matter of
politics than law.
Also Tuesday, prosecutors and defense attor-
neys for former Trump national security adviser
Michael Flynn agreed to postpone his sentencing
after he pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about
his contacts with a Russian official, in a sign
his cooperation was still needed in the Mueller
probe.
Trump confidants are reasserting that it is
the White House position that a sitting president
cannot be indicted. They are citing a 2000 opin-
ion of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal
Counsel, which provides legal advice and guid-
ance to executive branch agencies.
Trump’s lawyers have said Mueller plans to
adhere to that guidance, though Mueller’s office
has never independently confirmed that. There
would presumably be no bar against charging a
president after he or she departs the White House.
For many around Trump, Cohen has rep-
resented a greater threat than even the Russia
investigation, drawing from Cohen’s decade of
working as the then-celebrity real estate devel-
oper’s fixer.
An FBI raid on Cohen’s New York office and
hotel room in April rattled the president, who
has complained publicly about what he felt was
government overreach while privately worry-
ing about what material Cohen may have had
after working for the Trump Organization for a
decade.
Those in Trump’s orbit, including his law-
yer Rudy Giuliani, have steadily ratcheted up
attacks on Cohen, suggesting he was untrust-
worthy and lying about what he knew about
Trump’s business dealings. When Cohen’s team
produced a recording that the former fixer had
made of Trump discussing a payment to silence
a woman about an alleged affair, Giuliani sought
to impugn Cohen’s credibility and question his
loyalty.
Trump stewed for weeks over the media cov-
erage of the Manafort trial. Though the proceed-
ings were not connected to Russian election
interference, Trump has seethed to confidants
that he views the Manafort charges as “a warn-
ing shot” from Mueller.
“What matters is that a jury found that the
facts presented to them by the special prosecu-
tor warranted a conviction of someone who sur-
rounds the president,” Weinstein said.
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