Trump fixer Cohen pleads guilty, exaide Manafort convicted

Former lawyer’s plea can be damaging as it implicates president in a federal crime

WASHINGTON: Michael Cohen has pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations and bank fraud and implicated his former boss Donald Trump for payments made to two women for their silence about their affairs with the US president.

Trump’s former lawyer, who entered the guilty plea on Tuesday, is also prepared to cooperate with the probe into Russian interference in the 2016 US elections.

Also on Tuesday, former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort was found guilty by a jury in Virginia of eight counts of bank and tax fraud that could put him in jail for up to 10 years. The jury was deadlocked on 10 other counts and a mistrial was declared on those charges.

Cohen’s guilty plea to eight counts of federal crimes, which could together get him up to five years in jail, is perhaps the more damaging of the two developments for Trump as it directly implicates the president in a federal crime, which even his allies acknowledged was a “serious issue”.

Cohen told the trial court judge William H. Pauley III in New York under oath that he had made one payment “in coordination and at the direction of a candidate for federal office” and the second was made “under direction of the same candidate”.

A court paper filed by prosecutors said Cohen made the payments “in order to influence the 2016 presidential election” and that he had “coordinated with one or more members of the campaign, including through meetings and phone calls, about the fact, nature, and timing of the payments”.

A prosecutor later said Cohen had acted “for the principal purpose of influencing the election”. His attorney Lanny Davis said Cohen testified under oath that Donald Trump directed him to commit a crime by making payments to two women for the principal purpose of influencing an election.

“If those payments were a crime for Michael Cohen, then why wouldn’t they be a crime for Donald Trump?”.

Later, Davis told a TV channel that Cohen is “more than happy” to tell special counsel Robert Mueller all that he knows about the Russian meddling. He did not elaborate but indicated it could be about how much Trump knew of the Russian hacking of the Democratic party’s computers .

Trump on Wednesday attacked Cohen as a bad lawyer and someone who had flipped under pressure and argued his guilty plea to campaign finance violation allegations, that implicate the president, could not be called crimes.

“Michael Cohen plead guilty to two counts of campaign finance violations that are not a crime. President Obama had a big campaign finance violation and it was easily settled!,” he tweeted.

President Obama’s campaign was fined $375,000 in 2012 for violating reporting requirements. Trump’s former personal lawyer pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations and other charges Former national security adviser pleaded guilty to lying to FBI agents about links to Russia Trump campaign ex-chief is found guilty on eight out of 18 charges including filing false tax returns and bank fraud