The Daily - Implicating the President

Episode Date: August 22, 2018

Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former personal lawyer, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to campaign finance violations — and said Mr. Trump himself had ordered the crimes. Minutes later, Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign chairman, was convicted of financial fraud in the first trial resulting from the special counsel’s investigation. Guest: Joseph Kahn, the managing editor of The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today, the president's personal lawyer pleads guilty to campaign finance violations and says Donald Trump himself ordered the crimes. Two minutes later, the president's campaign chairman is found guilty of financial fraud in the Mueller investigation. It's Wednesday, August 22nd.

Joe Kahn, we were going to do part two in our series on family separations for today's show. That was our plan. You're the managing editor of The Times. You're kind of all of our bosses here. Tell us why we can't or maybe shouldn't do that. Well, it happens to be likely the most disruptive day in the Trump presidency so far. likely the most disruptive day in the Trump presidency so far. After months and months of potential possible threats, he has his first direct legal threat from one of his own very close aides and a legal conviction of his former campaign manager coming within two minutes of each other in the afternoon.

So this is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day for President Trump. A very bad day for President Trump. Okay, let's start at the beginning of the day. What are you expecting to happen on Tuesday? Welcome back to Mornings on 2. It's now 4.14. Happening today, more jury deliberations in the financial fraud trial of Paul Manafort. So early on Tuesday, we knew that there was a possibility that the jury in the Paul Manafort trial in Virginia might come back today with a verdict.

The case against President Trump's former campaign chairman is the first real test for special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation. on a series of charges, 18 different counts of bank fraud and tax fraud, which are tangential to this central Mueller investigation into Russian interference in the American election. Michael Cohen, you know, we're all watching Paul Manafort's trial. So, as we're waiting, we also begin to pick up tips that there could be a plea in the Michael Cohen case in New York. Now, the latest is that Michael Cohen is likely to be charged by the end of the month with tax and bank crimes evasion. He's facing potential charges from the Southern District of New York on a variety of counts. the Southern District of New York, on a variety of counts. Cohen is also facing an investigation into whether he violated campaign finance laws when he arranged payoffs to two women who claim to have had affairs with Trump, including adult film actress Stormy Daniels.

Depending on the purpose of the payments, they could be a campaign finance violation if the payments were made with the purpose of influencing the election. Right. The payment was made just days before the 2016 presidential election, raising questions of campaign financing violations. So he'd be pleading guilty to campaign fraud because the payments to these two women, Stephanie Clifford and Karen McDougal, were specifically made a few days before the election,

and Karen McDougal were specifically made a few days before the election, so during the campaign, to avoid the kind of embarrassing information that might turn off voters. So basically, it's a campaign event. Yes. So Cohen was facing those charges as well as charges into his business dealings in New York. We didn't know exactly what to expect if he were to appear in court, but we did hear that sometime today he was likely to show up in court. And Joe, what is the big question when it comes to how Cohen is going to plea? The question was, has he flipped? To what degree is he cooperating with prosecutors? And to what degree will we learn the details of that in any court appearance that he made today? And was there a sense of what Cohen was going to do?

Were we expecting him to flip or did we not know? We've been watching Cohen go through a series of changes since his offices were raided and he came under direct scrutiny of prosecutors. Mr. Trump has a significant number of people. of prosecutors. Mr. Trump has a significant number of people. I'd like to keep myself in that little circle of extremely loyal people. He was long one of the most loyal fixers, aides, and advisors to President Trump. And we will do what is necessary to protect him and the office of the presidency. He said, in fact, that he would take a bullet for Donald Trump. Right. But as it became clear that prosecutors had seized all kinds of records and tapes that were in Michael Cohen's possession, he began sending some very different signals.

My wife, my daughter and my son have my first loyalty and always will. That his main objective was to protect his family. Potentially, and actually quite publicly, offering to cooperate with prosecutors and leaking... Big time. And you guys are good guys. Hello, Pastor Scott?

No, Pastor Scott. What's happening? Can we use him anymore? No, use Mark Burns. I don't mean that. Some tantalizing details of the kind of information he might have about the president if prosecutors wanted to listen to him.

So there was an expectation that whenever he did plea, we would learn of details of whether and how Michael Cohen might be cooperating with prosecutors in a way that could damage the president. Okay, so based on that kind of evolving approach by Michael Cohen, it seems there's a pretty good reason to suspect that he might decide to cooperate with federal prosecutors. What happens on Tuesday? So on Tuesday when he shows up in court, we get a guilty plea to eight different counts of campaign finance violations.

And no sign of explicit cooperation with prosecutors. Today he 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. In addition, he makes a statement under oath before the judge that he directed these payments to Stormy Daniels and Cara McDougal at the direction of the candidate. By that, he was referring directly to Donald Trump. So on the surface, this feels okay for the president because Cohen doesn't flip, right? It will be open to debate whether this is better for the president or worse for the president. The argument that it's better for the president is that he didn't flip and maybe prosecutors concluded from that that Cohen didn't have much more value that he could really give them. On the other hand, it could be worse for the president because Cohen has now made a statement under oath that he was directed to make

illegal campaign contributions by the president, apparently without any kind of exchange or benefit from the prosecutors. In other words, it might have been easier for the president and the people around him to try to discredit the statement that Michael Cohen made if he had made it solely because he got some benefit or relief from the prosecutors. But in this case, there is no clear indication that he got any such benefit. So he was under no particular pressure to make that statement if it weren't true. So basically, Cohen's not flipping

looks pretty bad for President Trump because Cohen is telling a judge that the president was involved in this and he's not even getting anything out of it. That's right. He has made a direct statement implicating the president in directing his crime in almost any other scenario. The person directing the illegal activity

would come under direct indictment from the prosecutors. The prosecutors would always be interested in the candidate who is responsible for directing campaign finance contributions rather than an aide, a fixer, someone who actually carried out the violations because the candidate is the one that has the incentive to make these payments in order to influence the election. The question is what they do now, given that he's the sitting president. So let's say, for example, that Michael Cohen had worked for Hillary Clinton,

and she had lost the election, as she did, and he pled guilty to these charges on behalf of candidate Hillary Clinton. And he said, she told me to do it. She, you're saying, under these circumstances, would almost certainly be charged as a result. Almost certainly. There's almost no scenario in which a prosecutor would bring charges like this and leave the candidate unindicted as a result of a statement like this from an aide. So help me understand why that's unlikely to happen in this case against Donald Trump as sitting president.

We don't know exactly what prosecutors in the Southern District of New York will do. It's the most powerful U.S. attorney's office in the country. But longstanding Justice Department guidelines have advised against a prosecution of a sitting president. And it is thought to be, though we'll have to explore the possibilities, that prosecutors in this case would be reluctant to bring a charge directly against a sitting president. But there are a number of different scenarios that could play out over time. So this has turned from a theoretical threat to the presidency into something that's going to play out much more in real time. And the prosecutors have a number of different options that they could pursue at this point.

We move now to a federal courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia. So how, if at all, does this connect back to what's going on in this other courthouse on Tuesday with Paul Manafort? We left off that the jurors were debating whether or not to convict him on charges of bank fraud, tax evasion, that sort of thing. So 4.23 p.m., exactly two minutes after Michael Cohen enters his plea of guilty in the courthouse in New York, the jury comes back and tells the judge in the Paul Manafort case that they've reached a verdict in that trial. On the fourth day of deliberations, the jury returned a partial verdict of guilty in the Paul Manafort case. The jury handed special counsel Robert Mueller his first conviction in the ongoing investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 campaign. Paul Manafort has been found guilty by a jury on eight counts. Five counts of filing false tax returns, guilty on one count of not filing

financial accounts, and guilty on two counts of misleading lenders for loans he applied for. None of those charges, as we said, is directly related to the core inquiry in the Mueller investigation. Right. But here's what may happen. There is now a process typically that leads to sentencing. In that time, there's very likely to be some negotiation between Manafort's lawyers and the special counsel's office over whether or not he has any information that may cause them to recommend a lesser sentence to the judge. Paul Manafort has, to this date, declined to cooperate

with prosecutors in any way, but they now have amassed far more leverage over him than they had before they were able to win conviction on the charges that they brought. So the possibility that he will end up cooperating with prosecutors if, in fact, he has information that's damaging to the president has now increased as he faces a potentially very long jail term if he doesn't cooperate with them. So he's now choosing Paul Manafort for a second time to flip or to keep fighting. That's right. And Manafort will have to make another bet. He made a bet that he could get acquitted of the charges that they brought against him if he stood strong and declined to

cooperate. Now he would have to bet that the president of the United States would pardon him if he does not cooperate, because if he is not pardoned, he's likely to spend a big part of his remaining life in jail. Joe, when Robert Mueller, the special counsel, brought those charges against Manafort, they seem sort of unrelated to the Russia investigation. Then, he doesn't even bring charges against Cohen. He hands those off to a different set of prosecutors. But looking at today, I wonder how much of this is really all the work of Robert Mueller. Boy, I wonder too. It's definitely for Mueller by far

the best day that he's had. Up until now, he has faced almost a daily barrage of attacks. It's a disgraceful situation. It's a total witch hunt. I've been saying it for a long time. From the president, from Rudy Giuliani. What do we need to know that this is a totally illegitimate investigation? From other lawyers and loyalists to the president as pursuing a groundless, politicized witch hunt. We have been going through this long national nightmare of the Mueller witch hunt. And he has not been able to really record any big wins. Zero evidence of any collusion, no evidence of any wrongdoing, and yet

the investigation goes on and on and on, and it got really bad today. And within two minutes on the same day, he recorded two big wins that will make this day one of the most impactful legal days in the history of the United States political system. This is an enormous boost for Robert Mueller's investigation. And interestingly, this is a huge legal victory for Mueller, even though none of this stuff has anything to do with the Russia investigation, technically, the original Russia investigation,

interference into the U.S. election, which would seem to suggest that his wide-reaching investigation, this net that was cast so broadly, was quite intentionally done that way. That's right. I mean, both of these cases are tangential. Neither of them involves the central charges of Russian interference or collusion, but the main act in this has yet to fully play out. And Mueller's hand is significantly strengthened by the victories that he's been able to put on the board through the legal system. Right. Now he could have all this leverage when it does come to the main act

because of those other cases, which he's now able potentially to kind of take advantage of, to cash in on. That seems absolutely right. I believe the legal term for this is turning the screws. Yes. Joe, if you had to sum this day up, the significance of this day for the Trump presidency, what would you say?

the Trump presidency, what would you say? This was the day that a series of possible charges turned into something that really is a direct legal and direct political threat to Trump's longevity in office. It is quite likely that this will become a central issue in the midterm elections and force voters to decide whether or not they want to put Democrats back into majority in the House precisely because impeachment proceedings are the constitutional way to adjudicate an accusation of criminal activity by the president of the United States. And up until now, even Democrats had been reluctant to wave the impeachment flag as part of their campaign in the midterm elections. But you now have the president effectively being an unindicted co-conspirator in a crime. And it seems highly likely that that then becomes a serious political, if not a direct legal threat to the president. So this is a historic shift in the nature of the threat that we've been hearing

about, writing about, talking about for so many months. You're talking impeachment. Impeachment is an unavoidable topic. It doesn't mean he will be impeached. It doesn't mean that if he is impeached, he will be convicted. But it is an unavoidable topic when the president is an unindicted co-conspirator in a crime. That is the constitutional mechanism for adjudicating a credible accusation of illegal activity by the president of the United States. Well, Joe Kahn, thank you very much. We really appreciate it. Thank you. On Tuesday afternoon,

President Trump was asked about Cohen and Manafort as he left his plane for a campaign rally in West Virginia. Trump ignored questions about Cohen, who entered a guilty plea, but offered praise for Manafort, who is still deciding whether to cooperate with the special counsel. Call Manafort.

He's a good man. He was the... Calling him, quote, a good man. We continue the win shot. Thank you very much. Mr. President, what about Michael Cohen? Sorry, I'm sorry. Any comment on Michael Cohen? We'll be right back.

Here's what else you need to know today. Microsoft says it has discovered a Russian hacking operation targeting conservative think tanks in the U.S. that have criticized Russia's president, its oligarchs, and its human rights record. The company said it traced the operation to the GRU,

the same Russian intelligence unit responsible for interfering in the 2016 election. The Times reports that the choice of Republican-leaning groups suggests Russia's goal is to disrupt any U.S. institution, on the left or right, that challenges Putin. And...

Good morning and thank you all for joining this call. As part of President Trump's executive order to promote energy independence, he directed EPA to review the Clean Power Plan and repeal, replace, or revise it. Today, we are fulfilling the president's agenda. The Trump administration released new, relaxed rules for emissions by coal-burning power plants on Tuesday that would replace President Obama's plan to sharply reduce such emissions by closing the plants. According to the agency's own analysis, the rules will lead to almost 50,000 new cases of asthma, 20,000 missed school days, and up to 1,400 premature deaths from heart and lung disease every year. We are proposing a better plan, the Affordable Clean Energy or ACE rule.

It respects the rule of law and will enable states to build affordable, clean and reliable energy portfolios. The error of top down, one size fits all, federal mandates is over. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.