Former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort was found by a jury to be guilty on 8 fraud charges yesterday.
At roughly the same time, former Trump attorney Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to five counts of personal income tax evasion, one count of making false statements to a financial institution to get a loan, and two counts related to illegal campaign contributions.
He claims the Russia investigation is a "Witch hunt." Yesterday, various members of the Resistance, including Never Trump members and some voices in the media, mocked the notion of a witch hunt on the grounds that Manafort and Cohen had been found or pleaded guilty to crimes unrelated to Russia collusion.
The Washington Post called the Manafort conviction "a major if not complete victory for special counsel Robert S. Mueller III as he continues to investigate the president's associates." Voices claiming that the Manafort and Cohen legal problems vindicate Mueller should note that the Manafort conviction had literally nothing to do with Mueller's charge of investigating collusion with Russia to steal an election, and not just because the charges predate Trump.
As Byron York notes, "The importance of the financial crimes case against Manafort was never the financial crimes themselves. It was the prosecutors' hope that, by charging the hell out of the offenses alleged, by playing hardball with the defendant with a guns-drawn-at-dawn search-warrant raid, by jailing him over a debatable obstruction of justice charge that Manafort could be pressured into spilling what prosecutors apparently thought were a lot of beans about the Trump campaign and Russia in the 2016 election."
Nothing in Manafort's legal troubles implicates Trump.
As McCarthy noted months ago, the non-disclosure agreements - and not any silliness about Russia or obstruction - were Trump's real legal threat.
http://thefederalist.com/2018/08/22/6-takeaways-about-paul-manafort-and-michael-cohens-legal-woes/
At roughly the same time, former Trump attorney Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to five counts of personal income tax evasion, one count of making false statements to a financial institution to get a loan, and two counts related to illegal campaign contributions.
He claims the Russia investigation is a "Witch hunt." Yesterday, various members of the Resistance, including Never Trump members and some voices in the media, mocked the notion of a witch hunt on the grounds that Manafort and Cohen had been found or pleaded guilty to crimes unrelated to Russia collusion.
The Washington Post called the Manafort conviction "a major if not complete victory for special counsel Robert S. Mueller III as he continues to investigate the president's associates." Voices claiming that the Manafort and Cohen legal problems vindicate Mueller should note that the Manafort conviction had literally nothing to do with Mueller's charge of investigating collusion with Russia to steal an election, and not just because the charges predate Trump.
As Byron York notes, "The importance of the financial crimes case against Manafort was never the financial crimes themselves. It was the prosecutors' hope that, by charging the hell out of the offenses alleged, by playing hardball with the defendant with a guns-drawn-at-dawn search-warrant raid, by jailing him over a debatable obstruction of justice charge that Manafort could be pressured into spilling what prosecutors apparently thought were a lot of beans about the Trump campaign and Russia in the 2016 election."
Nothing in Manafort's legal troubles implicates Trump.
As McCarthy noted months ago, the non-disclosure agreements - and not any silliness about Russia or obstruction - were Trump's real legal threat.
http://thefederalist.com/2018/08/22/6-takeaways-about-paul-manafort-and-michael-cohens-legal-woes/
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