The NPR Politics Podcast - Trump's Attorney Michael Cohen Pleads Guilty & Paul Manafort Found Guilty By Jury

Episode Date: August 22, 2018

Michael Cohen, President Trump's former personal lawyer and fixer, has pleaded guilty to eight counts in federal court. The counts related to campaign finance violations involved payments that were made to keep two women quiet during the 2016 campaign. And a federal jury found Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign chairman, guilty in eight counts of tax and bank fraud. This episode: Congressional correspondent Scott Detrow, White House correspondent Tamara Keith, justice correspondent Carrie Johnson, justice correspondent Ryan Lucas, and political editor Domenico Montanaro. Email the show at [e-mail]. Find and support your local public radio station at npr.org/stations.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey y'all, this is Joshua Milliken on my 17th birthday at the Newseum. This podcast was recorded at 6.52 Eastern on August 21st. Things probably have changed by the time you hear it. So, keep up with all of NPR's coverage at NPR.org. Alright, here's the show. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. This afternoon in a federal courtroom in Virginia, former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort was found guilty on eight different counts.

And at almost the exact same time in a New York City federal courtroom, President Trump's longtime lawyer and fixer and close aide Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to eight different counts. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Carrie Johnson. I cover the Justice Department. I'm Ryan Lucas. I also cover the Justice Department. So we, for the past couple years, have spent so much time reading tea leaves, conjecturing, having hypotheses of what's going on with the various investigations here.

But we have a lot of facts to talk about today. Cold, hard facts, and they are convictions and guilty pleas. That's not all that happens, Scott Tetra. Another thing that happened today. What else happened? I'm going to throw it in there. The Justice Department filed a motion saying, we need more time with Michael Flynn, the president's former national security advisor,

who's also pleaded guilty. He's not ready to be sentenced yet. This is yet another signal that this investigation is not losing steam, but rather gaining momentum and hurtling towards some unknown conclusion at some unknown time. Tam, these do not seem to be the updates of an unfounded witch hunt, do they? Well, don't tell that to the president of the United States, who, standing on a tarmac in West Virginia on the way to a campaign rally, said, oh, this has nothing to do with me. This has a lot to do with the president. Even if, you know, the Manafort charges aren't related to the time that he spent on President Trump's campaign, the Cohen charges are. But also,

I mean, this is the president of the United States and a bunch of people he surrounded himself with over the course of his campaign and his early presidency. And the guilty pleas and the convictions are now just stacking up. Okay, so let's start with Manafort here, because Ryan and Carrie, you along with a couple of our producers have spent the last few weeks in this electronics-free cocoon of a federal courthouse in Alexandria. That all came to a conclusion today. Carrie, can you walk us through what exactly the jury decided here? Yeah, sure. This is day 16 of this case and day four of the jury deliberations early in the day.

The jury sent a note signaling they were having some kind of trouble reaching a consensus verdict. And by the end of the day, they had one. But on only eight of the 18 counts that Paul Manafort was facing, the jury convicted on all the counts of filing false tax returns, one count of failing to file a foreign bank account report, and a couple of bank fraud counts leaving on the table undecided numerous bank fraud and conspiracy charges and a few more foreign bank account charges. That said, this is very significant. The president's former campaign chairman and a lobbyist who had really enjoyed all of the fruits of Washington and international lobbying benefits

for three or four decades, is now a convicted felon. And Paul Manafort is 69 years old. So even if they did not convict him on 10 of the 18 counts, he still faces the prospect of spending the rest of his life in prison, a pretty harsh reality for a guy who once seemed to be at the top of the world. So, Carrie, this is the point in a legal podcast where I ask you a question that smart legal people like you probably think are stupid, but I see it always pop up a lot when it comes to instant analysis from non-legal people in cases like this. The argument that, oh, only eight of the 18 counts,

that's an argument that this was not a super solid case. That is not the way to look at this, I take it? Well, the Justice Department has about a week to decide whether they want to retry Paul Manafort on the 10 charges that were essentially a mistrial on which the jury could not reach a unanimous verdict. It's not clear to me whether they're going to do that or not, in part because remember, Paul Manafort faces a separate trial next month in Washington, DC on some charges that he was acting as an unregistered foreign agent doing lobbying for Ukraine and some money laundering counts and some other allegations. That said, it's quite significant. It's quite significant that this guy has now been found guilty of eight charges. And when it comes to sentencing time, when Paul Manafort is eventually

sentenced on these eight charges, the judge can take into account all the other conduct the government alleged, but he was not convicted on. In other words, the judge can consider the full panoply of his behavior or misbehavior, as it were, which is a very serious thing for a guy who's in his late 60s and may not ever see the light of day again. I was talking with a former federal prosecutor about this question, 8 of 18 counts, earlier today. And what he said was that essentially, in many ways, this bolsters this idea that this was a fair trial, that the jury was careful, that it went after specific counts, that it found evidence to support. Any argument that there was some sort of error, that Manafort

did not receive a fair hearing from the jury can basically be batted aside by looking at these 10 counts in which they weren't able to reach consensus and say they looked at this seriously. And basically that any argument will be undercut that there was any error here, that the jury didn't take this seriously. These hanging 10 counts do that. You both reported throughout the trial that the name Donald Trump was not something that was going to come up that much. Russia wasn't going to come up that much.

But still, Robert Mueller's investigation has happened by and large behind closed doors without many leaks over the past year or so. Did you learn anything? Did you glean anything from watching prosecutors work in court over the last couple of weeks about any sort of direction that this is going or the future of this investigation? Well, the most tantalizing thing about that, Scott, remains under seal, unfortunately, when Rick Gates testified. Rick Gates, the former business partner and right-hand man of Paul Manafort, a guy who flipped on Paul Manafort and agreed to cooperate and testify against him. Rick Gates was asked a question about whether he's cooperating with the special counsel with respect to other matters. He answered yes. And then the government objected. They all went to the bench, the lawyers for the special counsel, the Manafort defense lawyers, and the judge, and they put on that husher machine so you couldn't quite hear what was happening. But that part of the trial remains under seal and may remain under seal for some time because it gives a hint to other people, including possible subjects and targets of this investigation, as to where Rick Gates is telling them to go next. So clearly there's more going on here that we want to know. Well, that's a good segue to that other thing that happened today. While Ryan and Kerry were in their blissful news cocoon, Tamara, fill us in about what was going on in a real split screen situation up in a New York courtroom. Right. This is This was truly remarkable. We started getting word that

there was likely to be a plea agreement from Michael Cohen. Cohen is, as you said, President Trump's personal lawyer, former personal lawyer and a longtime fixer. And right around four o'clock, he went into the courthouse in the federal district in the Southern District of New York. And he pleaded guilty to eight felony charges, five related to taxes and unreported income of, according to the prosecutors, four point three million dollars over five years. And then one bank related issue, false statements in getting a home equity line of credit. But then the truly interesting part, and it may sound boring, but it's not when you get to it, two campaign finance charges. And those charges relate directly to President Trump and his campaign. These were payments that were paid at the direction of the

candidate. These invoices to cover up the repayments to Cohen were a sham. This is, as far as I can tell, the first time that President Trump or then candidate Trump has been directly linked to one of the crimes that are being discussed, that are being pleaded. Well, I believe that the president's legal team has at one point in time conceded that he knew about these. But certainly the fact that you have Michael Cohen standing up in court under oath saying that he made these payments and that the president knew about them, that it was at the direction of the president, that is no small thing. These payments were made to people whose names you've heard before. Stormy Daniels, the adult film actress, and Karen McDougal, the former Playboy playmate,

both of whom, leading up to the election, alleged that they had affairs with Donald Trump back in the early 2000s, around 2006, 2007, and neither of their stories came out before Election Day because of Michael Cohen. The way that this is written in criminal information, so in court papers detailing what Cohen did, it said that he caused $280,000 in payments to be made to silence two women, that's Daniels and McDougal, who planned to speak publicly

about alleged affairs with a presidential candidate. And they also mentioned possibly influencing the presidential campaign. That's what that's about. So President Trump's response, he didn't directly say anything about Michael Cohen when he spoke when he got off Air Force One in West Virginia. But speaking about Manafort, he repeated what he said before. This has nothing to do with Russia, nothing to do with me. Still nothing to do with Russia in terms of the charges that have been filed or pleaded to. But as we're mentioning, this is now very much within President Trump's circle. A question for Ryan or Kerry. Previous people who have pleaded guilty, most significantly Michael Flynn, George Papadopoulos, have said, have been entered cooperating agreements. They've been

cooperating with the special prosecutor. There's no indication that that's the case with Cohen, right? And also, this is not directly the special prosecutor. Can you explain what we know or don't know when it comes to that? So I would inject a note of caution here,'t know when it wants to hear what Michael Cohen has to say and has more evidence, documentary evidence or other witnesses to back that up. There's a statement from Michael Cohen's lawyer, Lanny Davis, and he says today Cohen stood up and 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 it be a crime

for Donald Trump? Well, Lanny Davis is as much a public relations maven as he is a lawyer. He's performed both of those functions since the Clinton era, if not earlier, but he came to my attention when he was working on behalf of Bill and Hillary Clinton. I don't think we know enough right now as to what Donald Trump knew or didn't know. It may be right now in Michael Cohen's interest to point the finger at a guy he once pledged undying loyalty to and doesn't anymore. But if I were a prosecutor or an FBI agent, I would want a lot of evidence as to what Donald Trump knew. And that would include a lot of things beyond the word of Michael Cohen and his legal representative. And for what it's worth, since we're going to talk about what Lainey Davis had to say, Rudy Giuliani, the president's lawyer, said there is no allegation of any wrongdoing against the

president in the government's charges against Mr. Cohen. And he says it's clear that, as the prosecutor noted, Cohen's actions reflected a pattern of lies and dishonesty over a significant period of time. So you're going to get spin from both sides on this. Ryan, the last thing I want to ask before we let you two go is, you know, so much was made of the digital blackout in the Virginia courthouse. For all the people covering this closely, can you walk us through how you all found out about the Cohen plea deal and what that was like in the Virginia courtroom? Well, we had heard earlier in the day from – I had actually bumped into a fellow journalist in the hallway who said that there was a report that Cohen might be reaching some sort of agreement today. And I said – I can't repeat exactly what I said, but I said, no way.

That sounds crazy. Sounds like you said something that wasn't family friendly, Ryan. Yeah, this is a family podcast. That may be the case. And so I went downstairs and I chatted with someone who was in the very, very small media closet where a couple of organizations have computers. And they said, yes, indeed, that was the case. So what I ended up doing was having to leave the courthouse,

go outside, go up across the square into the hotel, get onto my phones, check out what exactly had happened, had to make some calls, confirm some things, and then go back into the courthouse. But it was just people were going up and down the elevators kind of asking each other, did you hear about Cohen? Did you hear about Cohen? Can that really be today? Is it really going to happen? There was shock, to say the least,

when it actually turned out to be true. Well, Ryan and Kerry, thank you for all your work covering this trial. And we should say that Miles Parks and Barbara Sprunt, two producers in NPR, did a lot of work on this trial. And we should say that Miles Parks and Barbara Sprunt, two producers in NPR, did a lot of work on that too. We are going to let you two go and file whatever you have to file next. And when we come back, Tamara and I will talk about

the political fallout of all of this along with Domenico Montanaro. We'll be right back. See ya. Support for NPR and the following message come from Newsy, the TV news channel with honest, in-depth context on the stories that matter. Newsy is for people who aren't satisfied with getting only the loudest part of the story. Newsy delivers more, more context, more solutions, and greater understanding of the people and events that shape our world.

Learn more at newsy.com slash watch. Hey, this is Stretch Armstrong. And this is Papito Garcia, the hosts of What's Good. We're kicking off a new season with legendary singer-songwriter Erica Badu. That's why they call me Fat Belly Bella, because they never know when I'm going to be impregnated. Subscribe now. And we are back.

Domenico, hello. Hey there, Scott. How's it going? Oh, man, what a day. It's going, man. Subscribe now. The only problem that we have is that there's no radio version of the really dramatic TV split screen when two big things are happening at once. Like, what's our split screen? Our split screen is like, we're going to talk about that in a minute. All right, now we're back to the other thing. Tam's head silently exploding in her booth at the White House is what it is. No, it's all great. That's why you have editors, Tam.

Yep. Tell you what to prioritize. All right. So we're talking about the political aspects of this here. So let's start with this. It's rigged. It's a witch hunt. No collusion. Robert Mueller is disgraced and discredited.

These are the repeated themes in recent weeks of President Trump's Twitter feed. Here's what he said. It's hard to hear over the airplane noise, but here's what he said getting off Air Force One a couple hours ago. It doesn't involve me, but I still feel, you know, it's a very sad thing that happened. This has nothing to do with Russian collusion. This started as Russian collusion. This has absolutely nothing to do. This is a witch hunt and it's a disgrace.

Witch hunt, disgrace. Tam, how much does this poke a big hole in that argument? Maybe not that much. I think that the president and his allies would say that the Russia investigation is supposed to be about Russian interference in the presidential election. And thus far, there hasn't been much directly related to that. You certainly have people very close to the president, people involved in his campaign. You have a campaign finance violation related to his campaign and paying off women. So in the view of President Trump, this is an investigation that started one place going someplace else. Well, thing is, though, I mean, when you start turning over rocks, you start to find worms. And what they found are a lot of worms here, I mean, when you start turning over rocks, you start to find worms. And what they've

found are a lot of worms here. I mean, there are some things that have gone on. There are now seven people who have either pleaded guilty or been found guilty now with Paul Manafort, stemming from the Russia investigation. You know, the Michael Cohen charges, of course, are from Mueller going and referring that case to the Southern District of New York. So it's not directly from what Mueller was investigating. And you're right that this does take a little bit of field, but they have found a lot of things that either a jury now has found his campaign chairman guilty of, or there's been so much pressure on these folks that they have needed to plead guilty

and feel like that was the better thing to do as to their lifestyle goes. Now, remember, Mueller also has indicted 13 Russians on, you know, for essentially interfering in the election. Yeah. One thing on the on the on the public relations battle, that's a big part of the political angle of this. I was struck that Robert Mueller has never come out and said anything at all as Trump has beat up on him over and over again. And you've seen the steady decline and the increasing partisan split on public views of Mueller in this investigation. Today would be a clear moment for a prosecutor directing an investigation to come out and take a victory lap, to come out and talk in front of the microphones in front of the Virginia courthouse, Robert Mueller yet again declined to take up that opportunity.

Well, there's plenty more work to do. You know, this is not something where Mueller is going to beat his chest because despite Rudy Giuliani, the president's outside counsel, saying that Mueller should put up or shut up, Mueller has done nothing but keep quiet and put up. So that's not in his DNA. It's not in what he wants to do. That's not his goal. It's very much to the advantage of Rudy Giuliani and the president to go out and say a lot about this so that they can, as you say, get his base behind them so that if this does get referred to Congress for some kind of impeachment, something or other, when the ball bounces further

down the road because the president is not likely to be indicted from anything from the Mueller investigation because of Justice Department guidelines. That's where they need to be able to influence Republicans to say, don't go through with this. Let's talk about the midterms for a moment, because one of the things that we've seen over the last few weeks is that Democrats have, for the last few months, focused on two issues and said two issues are winners for them to talk about. One is health care, making it more accessible, making it cheaper. And the other is the idea that a Democratic House would be a check on President Trump, be able to stop some of his policies and oversee him. But we've seen increasingly Democrats wanting to talk about the idea of corruption,

of ethics reforms, good government reforms. Earlier today, before all this other news happened, I went to an event where Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren was rolling out a big anti-corruption bill that she's introduced. Sounded a whole lot like a 2020 campaign and not a 2018 Senate campaign. But here's what she had to say at one point. Let's face it. There is no real question that the Trump era has given us the most nakedly corrupt leadership this nation has seen in our lifetimes. But they are not the cause of the rot. They're just the biggest, stinkiest example of it. Domenico, do you think this idea makes sense politically? Or do you think that with all the

noise out there and with a different storyline coming every other day, that just kind of gets lost in the shuffle? You know, three quarters of voters in 2006 said that they felt that corruption or scandal ethics were very important to their vote. And that's because there were a lot of Republicans who were implicated in various scandals that really did help Democrats over the finish line to be able to take back the House. Democrats seem to be rerunning a little bit of that playbook. And because we've seen some indictments of Republicans already, just one today from Duncan Hunter and his wife. He's a congressman from California, a Republican, for using a quarter

million dollars of campaign funds for overseas trips and dental work. So, Tam, one last thing to talk about here, and that's the pardon angle, because President Trump has made it clear that he uses pardons in a political way. And he sort of dangles it out there because he likes cliffhangers. And also, you know, in his remarks today on that tarmac, he said that he felt badly for both of them. He said he had great sympathy for Manafort. That certainly does not dispel the idea that he could be interested in it. Of course, he has not pardoned, say, Michael Flynn or George Papadopoulos or Rick Gates, but it's still hanging out there. There's an issue, though. If he does that, that would create a crisis. I mean, there's no way that

that wouldn't create a crisis. Domenico, let's end it on this. A week from now, two months from now, what's the significant thing that happened today? What, if anything, does this do to change the big picture storyline of the Trump presidency? Look, this was a remarkable and potentially consequential day in the Trump presidency. Just think about when you have Michael Cohen saying that the president was the one directing him to make these payments. Right. And you have the Southern District of New York essentially saying have the prosecutors essentially saying that that's what happened. This is the first time that we have seen the president directly tied to something potentially criminal. I mean, let that sit for a second. I mean, that is a big,

big deal. The president has denied that any of the money that was reimbursed to Michael Cohen came from the campaign. He did so in May. I also think that this also tells us about the fact that you really need evidence to get anything that is. And remember this. What are those prosecutors in New York have? They have lots of tapes and lots of documents that they seized from Michael Cohen. And this is day one. Mark this day down where there was a direct tie to the president. All right. Well, it's only Tuesday, but we will certainly be back multiple times in your podcast feed this week. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, political editor.

And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.