The president’s criminal men
Michael Cohen used to say he would take a bullet for Donald Trump. On Tuesday, Trump’s longtime personal attorney appears to have done precisely that — only to catch it in his teeth and spit that bullet right back in the president’s face.
Cohen’s stunning disclosure — a courthouse allocution admitting he made criminal hush payments to two women “in coordination and at the direction of” Trump to influence the 2016 presidential election — was the loudest in a day full of thunderclap developments.
Cohen’s eight guilty pleas in New York — coinciding with eight verdicts of guilty out of 18 federal charges of bank and tax fraud levied against former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort —handed Trump the worst day of his presidency. By nightfall, Americans began wondering anew about his very legitimacy, given the malfeasance that helped land him the job.
On Cohen’s admission alone, Trump is directly entangled as the first unindicted co-conspirator in the White House since Richard Nixon. And the Manafort guilty verdicts, in addition to placing a key Trump aide in line for an 80-year prison sentence, came as powerful vindication for special counsel Robert Mueller. Behind the smoke, the tenaciously straight-arrow Mueller now is identifying actual fire. Or, to borrow the president’s parlance, the witchhunt is beginning to bag serious witches.
Add it all up and Guilty Tuesday leaves the world in a place both richly reassuring and deeply unsettling.
On one hand, we are bearing witness as the grinding wheels of American justice reassert themselves, slowly and methodically. Bruce Heyman, the former U.S. Ambassador to Ottawa, tweeted a sense of relief and resolve — and a call for patience — in a message to those of us north of the border: “To Canadians watching the U.S. news. Believe in America & trust that our system works. Also believe in the American public … Stick with us as you always have!”
Heyman’s reassurance is all well and good. But the wheels of justice now appear to be pushing Trump into a very dark and potentially dangerous corner, where his volatility can wreak havoc, potentially much faster than American jurisprudence can prevail.
Tuesday’s admissions sparked renewed talk of impeachment. But barring additional developments — and unless Trump’s thusfar-obedient Republican Congress decides it has had enough of this president — any such process hinges upon a Democratic tide rolling in with November’s midterm elections. And even then, the electoral math points to the likelihood of a divided Congress, with Republicans retaining control of the Senate — a de facto veto against unseating Trump.
Short of impeachment, a divided Congress, with Democrats in control of the House of Representatives, would be in a position to all but halt Trump’s agenda, if not unseat him. However this adds up, brace for more months of chaos as Americans grapple with a midterm election that now is shaping up as a referendum on the president.
Long before any of that unfolds, Team Trump will be scrambling for victories elsewhere — anywhere — and perhaps at any cost. On Thursday, the White House is expected to claim victory on at least one portion of the NAFTA file — a handshake agreement with Mexico involving automobiles and agriculture.
The Trudeau government, regardless of whether it was worried or relieved to be sidelined for this segment of NAFTA talks, now more than ever may face a president fully equipped and willing to detonate punitive trade bombshells at Canada’s expense, if only to steal back a few headlines to satisfy his base.
There is no diplomatic handbook for this phase of the unpredictable Trump era.
As bad a day as Tuesday was for Trump, he’s not going anywhere just yet. And cornered, he may well prove to be more dangerous than ever.
Team Trump will be scrambling for victories elsewhere — anywhere — and perhaps at any cost