Donald Trump faces legal and political jeopardy after two former aides are convicted

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen directly implicated him in a Manhattan court on Tuesday, admitting that he arranged payments at the prompt of the then presidential candidate, to two women who claimed to have sex with him (Trump), to prevent them from talking about it before the 2016 Presidential elections.

Almost simultaneously, in a separate case, a jury in a Virginia court outside Washington DC convicted former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort on eight of the 18 tax-and bank-fraud charges while reporting that it was deadlocked on 10 other charges.

The twin developments constituted two potentially devastating legal and political setbacks for the US President in the eyes of his critics, but Trump and his supporters made light of them, maintaining that both cases were run-of-the-mill lawsuits that did not involve "collusion with Russia," a charge critics have sought to pin on him.

Trump brushed away the developments.

"Fake news. Fake news and the Russian witchhunt! We got a whole big combination. Where is the collusion?" the US President, who took the campaign trail in the hours after the legal verdicts broke in New York and Washington, told his adoring fan base in West Virginia. "You know they're still looking for collusion. Where is the collusion? Find some collusion!"


Trump later mocked the justice system in the Manafort trial for not being able to come to decision on ten other counts, while maintaining that Cohen "plead guilt on two counts of campaign finance violations that are not a crime."


"President Obama had a big campaign finance violation and it was easily settled!" Trump claimed on Twitter, while sneering at his one-time fixer. "If anyone is looking for a good lawyer, I would strongly suggest that you don’t retain the services of Michael Cohen!" the US President tweeted about a man who once said he would take bullet for Trump but decided in court on Tuesday that he will spill the beans, possibly in exchange for a reduced sentence.

Trump, who had distanced himself from Paul Manafort saying he had worked for him (Trump) for only a few months, also had a change of heart in the opposite direction for his former campaign chairman, saying he feels "very badly for Paul Manafort and his wonderful family… because ‘Justice’ took a 12-year-old tax case, among other things, applied tremendous pressure on him and, unlike Michael Cohen, he refused to ‘break’ -- make up stories in order to get a ‘deal.’"


"Such respect for a brave man!" Trump said of a convicted felon who has close ties with Russia, who many analysts feel will eventually be pardoned by the President.

However, in order to do that, Trump first has to overcome the legal jeopardy and the stigma of being directly implicated by Cohen, who told the court that "in coordination with and at the direction of a candidate for federal office…I participated in this conduct (paying off the two women)… for the principal purpose of influencing the election."

"If those payments were a crime for Michael Cohen, then why wouldn’t they be a crime for Donald Trump?" Cohen’s lawyer Lanny Davis argued, after it was established that Trump had reimbursed Cohen, making it a campaign finance violation.

Davis also suggested in television interviews that Cohen may have more information to share with FBI Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller, including on the Russian hacking of Democratic Party computers and whether Trump knew ahead of time about the crime and cheered it on, a charge made by Omarosa Manigault, another Trump aide who has fallen out with the President.

Mueller "will have a great deal of interest in what Michael has to say," Davis said, in a clear indication that the Russia collusion story is not over yet.

While the two big legal developments shook the White House, the Trump Presidency isn’t in any immediate danger although critics compared it to the Watergate scandal that ended the Nixon Presidency.

The US President cannot be criminally indicted while in office, and is term-bound for four years unless he resigns voluntarily or is removed from office either under Article 25, Section 4 (under which the vice president and a majority of the cabinet can decide he is unable or unfit to serve) or through impeachment by Congress.

But Trump has a pliant, loyal cabinet that will not oust him, and Republicans, replete with lawmakers fearful of Trump’s ability to damage their re-election prospects, are in control of the House of Representatives, which initiates impeachment proceedings.

So effectively, it all boils down to the November mid-term elections when the entire 435-member House is up for re-election. If Democrats recapture the House, they can initiate impeachment proceedings against the President, although even impeachment by the House does not result in the President’s removal; it requires a 2/3rd super-majority vote in the Senate (67/100), a near-impossibility in the US.

However, the legal developments lay open the possibility that Trump can be indicted after he has demitted office when he is not constitutionally protected.

While the American legal and judicial system spoke clearly, it remains to be seen how the country’s political system responds to the developments. Despite some flagrant and egregious behavior that would have felled elected executives in most democratic countries, the Republican Party has continued to support Trump, with many GOP lawmakers fearful of electoral punishment from a vindictive President should they desert him.

Trump commands enough support from his electoral base to wreck the election chances of anyone opposing him, a power he shows off frequently with raucous campaign rallies underwritten by the slogan "Make America Great Again."

In fact, while the liberal media and stateside talking heads were working themselves into a lather over the Cohen and Manafort cases and their implications for the Trump presidency, the President and his supporters, including the conservative media was directing attention to a murder in Indiana, where a young woman was allegedly killed by a purportedly illegal immigrant, to make their case for tougher immigration laws.

In the Trump world, it was just another blip in a controversial presidency.