Trump accuses Cohen of making up stories
Experts warn the legal swirling may further threaten his presidency
US President Donald Trump has insisted he did nothing wrong after Michael Cohen implicated him in illicit hush payments made before the 2016 election, as experts warned the legal maelstrom swirling around the Republican leader could further threaten his presidency.
On perhaps the worst day of Trump’s tumultuous time in office, his former longtime personal attorney Cohen told a federal judge on Tuesday that Trump directed him to make payments to silence women alleging affairs with the president. Cohen didn’t mention Trump’s name.
Cohen’s statements came on a day of head-spinning political drama for Trump, whose former campaign chief Paul Manafort was found guilty within the same hour of federal tax and bank fraud.
After the claim was made against him, Trump fired back on Wednesday and accused Cohen of “making up stories” in order to get a “deal”. He later tweeted that the lawyer’s actions were “not a crime”, and went further in an interview with Fox and Friends, saying they were “not even a campaign violation” because he subsequently reimbursed Cohen for the payments personally instead of with campaign funds.
The White House also pushed back forcefully on Wednes- day against Cohen’s implicit allegation against Trump.
“As the president has said, we’ve stated many times, he did nothing wrong,” Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said at a White House news conference. “Just because Michael Cohen made a plea deal doesn’t mean that that implicates the president on anything.”
At the same time, Trump praised Manafort in another tweet as “a brave man”, raising speculation the former campaign chairman could become the recipient of a pardon.
Manafort, Trump said, had “tremendous pressure on him and, unlike Michael Cohen, he refused to ‘break’, ” Sanders said the matter of a pardon for Manafort had not been discussed.
Groundless timing
Despite Trump’s defiant tone, critics say that the claim made by the president that the payments were personal does not hold up given the timing — only weeks before the 2016 presidential election.
“If this was a personal matter, why wasn’t the actress paid off after the affair or in the intervening decade?” said Paul S. Ryan, the head of litigation at Common Cause. “The election was what made her story valuable.”
Meanwhile, Reuters said that the Cohen and Manafort cases ratchet up political pressure on Republicans ahead of the November mid-term elections as Democrats are eagerly anticipating gaining subpoena power over the White House — and many are openly discussing the possibility of impeaching Trump — should they retake control of the House in the elections.
Among Trump allies, the back-to-back blows were a harbinger of dark days to come for the president. And even Trump loyalists acknowledged the judicial proceedings were a blow to the GOP’s chances of retaining the majority this year, The Associated Press reported.