Today, Explained - Guilty. Guilty. Guilty?

Episode Date: August 22, 2018

In an unprecedented one-two punch Donald Trump’s personal lawyer pleaded guilty to and his campaign manager was found guilty of serious crimes yesterday evening. Vox’s Matthew Yglesias explores the implications. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you open up your web browser and go to Google Play, you'll see a bunch of different options on the left side of your screen. Apps, movies and TV, music, books, newsstand, devices. Google would like me to tell you a little bit more about the books. For a limited time, you get $10 off for BuzzFeed News. The president had a very rough pair of minutes yesterday regarding two of his former associates, Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen. Let's start with Manafort. Guilty on eight counts, mistrial on 10. What's he guilty of? So he's guilty of all of the buckets of allegations that special counsel Robert Mueller's office charged him with, failing to report foreign bank account,

the tax and bank fraud charges. He just wasn't guilty of all the counts within those buckets. So what happens to all the charges that the jury was unable to reach decision on? The government now has a week to decide if they want to come back and retry him. They certainly have that option. What complicates it for them is that in less than a month, Mueller's office is going to trial against Manafort already again, this time in Washington, D.C., on a completely different indictment related to Manafort's work overseas, but different charges. So same players, different venue, somewhat different allegations and charges. How about sentencing?

So he hasn't been sentenced yet. That'll come in the Virginia case. At some point later, the judge has sort of postponed that, knowing that this other trial is coming up. But he does face jail time. You know, the government has said at least a couple years what that will look like, though we don't know. So it sounds like the sentencing is really up to the judge. You were at the Manafort trial in Alexandria. What's the judge like? The judge is a character.

This is Judge T.S. Ellis III. He's been on the bench in the Alexandria federal court since 1987. Just that name makes him sound like a character. He's an institution in that court. He's known in the region. He is the word that comes up a lot is colorful. In the first days of the Manafort trial, he told them to rein in facial expressions that he said communicate a message of, quote, why do we have to put up with this idiot judge? He will often digress on the bench to tell stories of his life as a lawyer, his time spent overseas. You know, I think what's

notable here is before the trial, there were a series of hearings on motions and arguments leading up to trial. And the judge made clear in one of his opinions that he's not a fan of independent counsels. You know, he has been on the bench for quite a while. He was there for the independent counsel battles of the 1990s. He is not a fan. And whether his personal feelings about Mueller's office and what they're doing factors into sentencing is we just don't know. And minutes before all of this came down in the Manafort trial, Michael Cohen walked into a court in Manhattan and pleaded guilty to eight federal crimes. What were those? Yeah, well, I should say, first of all, so in the Manafort trial, we haven't had any phone or computers inside the courthouse.

So I should say that we all learned about what was going on just through word of mouth. Another reporter happened to have gone outside and checked his phone and then come back in and basically told an entire courtroom of legal reporters in DC that Michael Cohen was about to plead guilty, which was quite a shock. It kind of spread like wildfire in the courtroom. You know, if you imagine it like spreading out from the back of the courtroom to the front, sort of playing a game of telephone, did you hear, did you hear? So yeah, Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to eight counts in federal district court in Manhattan. The charges that, of course, everyone is talking about are the two campaign finance law charges, basically saying that he orchestrated and arranged for payments to two women who had accused the president of extramarital affairs and activity, Karen McDougal and Stormy Daniels, although they're not named

in the charging papers. And he's pleaded guilty to violating campaign finance laws in the course of doing that. And is that Michael Cohen cooperating with the Mueller investigation? Or is that Michael Cohen just saying, hey, look, I'm guilty of some stuff? It is not cooperation. One thing that was quite striking and notable about his plea deal is that it did not include a cooperation clause, which is something that we have seen explicitly in plea agreements reached between, for instance, Michael Flynn and Mueller's office, the former national security advisor, George Papadopoulos, the former campaign advisor

who also pleaded guilty. Those plea deals said, I will cooperate with prosecutors and I will delay sentencing until they are satisfied with my cooperation. The government agreed to ask for a reduced sentence if they're satisfied with that cooperation. None of that was in the Michael Cohen plea deal. So unlike Paul Manafort or like anyone else, Michael Cohen said he would take a bullet for President Trump. He literally said that. This feels like taking a shot at President Trump. Yeah, and his lawyer explicitly took a shot at Trump. There is no factual dispute. Mr. Trump's lawyers said he directed Michael Cohen to make that payment. He is as much guilty of a felony, he just hasn't owned up to it. But what

he did do is try to hide by asking his lawyer to do something he wasn't willing to do because he feared the electoral consequences of what was being done was to pay hush money involving two women. Trump's name isn't in the charging papers. And the president's lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, you know, correctly said yesterday that the charging documents don't allege any wrongdoing by the president, which is true. But Michael Cohen went into the courtroom yesterday and said that he not only implicated, he specifically under oath stated that Donald Trump directed him to commit a crime, making Donald Trump as much guilty of that felony as my client, Mr. Cohen.

The implications of that are, I don't even know what to say the implications of that are. That sort of sets off a whole other chain of events that is just getting started. But, you know, I think it's worth noting that when you're staring down, especially these financial crimes, you know, I should say again, the lying to a bank charge, like bank fraud, it's similar, carries up to 30 years in prison. The campaign finance charges are up to five years each. The tax charges are up to five years each. But some of these, when you stack them up, it's a lot of jail time that you're facing down. And it's, I think, perhaps easy to say when you're not looking at jail time that you feel a certain way or you have a sense of loyalty to a certain person. But the prospect of years of incarceration is pretty powerful.

How did Donald Trump react to all of this? Yesterday, within I think an hour of the Manafort verdict, the president talked to reporters and he first made clear that this didn't involve him. He said, it doesn't involve me, but he said he felt very badly about what had happened to Manafort, but he said it had nothing to do with Russian collusion, which is correct. And with Michael Cohen, I think there's been more of a rift. I don't think we heard the president last night say anything about Michael Cohen. But this morning, he made an appearance on Twitter saying, if anyone is looking for a good lawyer, I would strongly suggest that you don't retain the services of Michael Cohen, exclamation point. And shortly thereafter, the president weighed in on both Paul Manafort and

Michael Cohen tweeting, quote, I feel very badly for Paul Manafort. Again, that phrase, I feel badly for him and his wonderful family, quote unquote, justice, took a 12 year old tax case, among other things, applied tremendous pressure on him. And unlike Michael Cohen, he refused to quote unquote, break, make up stories in order to get a, quote unquote, deal. Such respect for a brave man, exclamation point, which is maybe one of the strongest statements that we've seen from the president so far in favor of Paul Manafort and really breaking with Michael Cohen. Zoe Tillman is a legal reporter for BuzzFeed News. Shortly after we spoke this morning,

the president released an additional statement in a video shot on the lawn of the White House. Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats want to abolish the brave men and women of ICE. What I want to do

is abolish the killers in ISIS. And you know who's going to win? We are. Donald Trump didn't mention the fact that his personal lawyer just called him a criminal. Is the rest of the government going to have a discussion about it? I'm Sean Ramos for him. That's next on Today Explained. Google Play has audiobooks.

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or at netflix.com slash explained. Matthew Iglesias, senior correspondent here at Vox, can you help us with some perspective here? Absolutely. I love perspective. Okay, so the president's former campaign manager and personal lawyer are found guilty and plead guilty within minutes of each other, respectively. Has anything like that ever happened in American politics before? No, I mean, that's wild, right? I mean, there's just a level of criminal association here that is without precedent and shocking on its own terms.

And, you know, it would be nice to everyone kind of take five minutes, think it over, contemplate, let it all sink in. But of course, what people are really interested in in is can these close associates of the president implicate other people, the president himself, his children, other people in the inner circle perhaps serving in the higher reaches of government. It seems clear that the special counsel's team believes that Paul Manafort can and that they have been trying to pressure him to cooperate. He has not done so so far. On the other hand, Michael Cohen and his attorney are representing that they really can implicate Donald Trump and they seem to be quite openly fishing for some kind of deal. And so far, the special counsel, as far as we know, has not bid on that.

So it's an intriguing mismatch, right? We have two high-ranking Trump world figures, guilty plea, guilty verdict, one that the special counsel is really trying to get to cooperate, and another one who's really looking for a deal. And so far, it hasn't quite all come together. And we're all curious, will it? And this is all developing as we speak. But I mean, has Cohen given any indication that he might personally cooperate with the Mueller investigation? He has. I mean, there's two sort of threads to this, right? So one is he said in court that some of the things he did relating to hush money payments that violated

federal campaign finance law, he said he did that at the behest of Donald Trump. Now, that's outside the scope of Robert Mueller's investigation, right? Then Lanny Davis, Michael Cohen's attorney, he was on television Tuesday night, and he was indicating. Mr. Cohen has knowledge on certain subjects that should be of interest to the special counsel and is more than happy to tell the special counsel all that he knows, not just about the obvious possibility of a conspiracy to collude and corrupt the American democracy system in the 2016 election, which the Trump Tower meeting was all about, but also knowledge about the computer crime of hacking and whether or not Mr. Trump knew ahead of time about that crime and even cheered it on.

But I think an important thing for people to understand is that the crimes that Michael Cohen confessed to, some of which do implicate Trump, they don't happen to relate to the Russia investigation. And if Robert Mueller was just sort of outfishing for any old thing, he could easily pursue these campaign finance violations. So far, it seems like he's not doing that, right? He's taking a very literal view of his mandate. Members of Congress could be asking for the appointment of a new special counsel to say, we have serious evidence that the president of the United States committed crimes that don't have anything to do with the Russia

investigation. So we need an inquiry into that. Because his personal lawyer just swore that he did commit a crime. Right. Or you could have congressional hearings, right? It seems like a no-brainer. Michael Cohen said this in court. Everyone went, oh my God, went to type up their stories.

And then the judge just kind of moves on because it's not his job to investigate the president. But the House Government Oversight Committee could call Michael Cohen in to testify and say, like, when you said that the president ordered you to do this, like, did you mean that? And he'd be like, yes, Mr. Congressman, I did. And do you have proof? Like that would be interesting to know. The House Oversight Committee run by the Republican Party. Yes. So right now, the Republicans run the House, they run the Senate. And Paul Ryan said, well, he can't make any strong claims about this because he doesn't know what the truth is.

But he also isn't doing anything to find out what the truth is, right? Congressional Republicans fundamentally are not interested in a lot of these questions around Donald Trump. Trump's tax returns have, I think, come to stand as a sort of stand-in for all of this, right? But it's very unusual for the president of the United States to be doing no disclosures about his personal financial information.

We have no idea who is paying Donald Trump, what interests they have before the government, what access or policy favors they're getting in exchange for that. And it would be child's play to bring that to light, but it's not Robert Mueller's job to bring that to light. And there's a very clear political calculation going on here, right? House Republicans, Senate Republicans are getting a lot of things that they've wanted for a long time. Yes. I mean, they are moving the policy ball forward, although I think the political calculation is a little unclear. I mean, their poll numbers are not looking very good right now. It's very possible that they are going to lose the

House in November. If Democrats come in, then all whatever it is Republicans have been covering up is going to come out anyway. Is that true? So what might Democrats do if they win in the midterm? If Democrats win the midterms, they will almost certainly force disclosure of Trump's tax returns. They're going to force some kind of disclosure of the memberships at his various golf clubs, things like that, who's paying him money. They may be able to look into the financial records of Trump Organization's shell companies and they will be able to subpoena people to come in and testify, whether that's Michael Cohen or anyone else, not just about Trump and Russia.

I mean, of course, they'll ask about that, but about the whole range of things Donald Trump has been involved with. This is normal congressional oversight stuff. Republicans, had they wanted to do it, could have been the heroes of this story. But they've made themselves the villains on the calculus that they will win the midterms and the cover-up will continue to stay in place. But, you know, I think that could easily prove to be a bad bet. Donald Trump has been operating on this sort of like witch hunt victim defense. Yes. When the heat wasn't even really turned up that high. Now that his personal attorney has been implicated in all of this, has personally said that the president of the United States ordered

me to break the law, that his former campaign manager is guilty on eight counts, what can we expect from the president? You know, I think it's been shrewd of him to get out early in sort of defining this whole thing as a witch hunt in starkly partisan terms. Because imagine if there had been no Russia investigation. We're humming along, we're talking about taxes or whatever. And then one day, boom. It turns out the U.S. attorney in New York is charging the president's personal lawyer

with tax fraud, bank fraud, making false statements, campaign finance violations. And the defendant says the president ordered him to do some of these crimes. That would be a huge story, right? We'd all be like, what the fuck? But Trump has built up this whole drama around the deep state and Russia and blah, blah, blah. So Trump's enemies sort of already assumed he was guilty and are not blown away by Cohn. And Trump's supporters have been psychologically prepared

for like the legal system to come after their boss, right? To doubt everything that happens. Who's fighting and believe nothing, right? So it's, I don't know, you know, what we're going to get going forward. But I mean Trump has been very clear since before these cases were filed that he wants you to view the whole process as fundamentally illegitimate. And it's a powerful message to people who are inclined to like him for other reasons to say that like, yeah, like this is all just part of the broader sort of cultural conflict that Trump is a symbol in. And even if the GOP decided one day to start taking all this a bit more seriously, he might still be effective in playing that card. I mean, I think he is effective on certain levels. This is why ultimately I think it will be interesting to get a clearer view of his personal finances, right?

Because a key element in Trump's politics, anybody's politics, right, is the president wants to say, look, I'm working on behalf of you, right? And if there were some breaking of campaign finance law, like if you believe that Trump is fighting for you, then breaking campaign finance law is part of that fight. But if Trump is just lining his pockets personally, that's not fighting for you, right? That's fighting for him. And it seems to me that the level of secrecy around Trump's personal finances must be because there's a very unflattering portrait to be painted of what he's actually doing, who is actually profiting, who is paying him and why. Thanks again to Google Play for supporting our show this week. Google Play has audiobooks, in fact, over a thousand titles to choose from. And you can get $10 off your first title by visiting g.co slash play slash explained.