Magic eight ball says Trump is toast!

| 10:30 pm EDT August 21, 2018
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Donald J. Trump had a very bad day – an extremely bad day. The verdict in the Paul Manafort trial and Michael Cohen plea deal came down within an hour of each other, each involving eight counts. The jury in the Manafort trial came back with guilty verdicts on eight counts of bank and tax fraud. The jury could not agree on the ten other counts, resulting in Judge T.S. Ellis III declaring a mistrial on those ten counts.

Trump told reporters, “I feel very badly for Paul Manafort.” Apparently, Trump’s attempted efforts to get to the jury via Twitter and on the airwaves did not work. Trump also added, “It has nothing to do with Russian collusion.” Manafort faces a theoretical maximum of eighty years in prison for these eight counts, though some legal experts are predicting something closer to fourteen years. And as a reminder, another prosecution will take place against Manafort on other serious charges next month.

To add insult to injury, Michael Cohen, Mr. Fixit, pleaded guilty to eight criminal counts including tax fraud, false statements to a bank and campaign finance violations tied to his work for Trump. The plea agreement includes a statement that “in coordination and at the direction of a candidate for federal office,” Cohen acted to conceal and keep from the public information harmful to said candidate. Unless we are to believe this is another federal office candidate, a safe bet is that one person by the initials DJT is the person to which Cohen refers. Not good for Trump.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders issued the following statement: “On Paul Manafort: Refer you to the President’s comments just now from West Virginia. On Michael Cohen: Refer you to the President’s outside counsel.”

Rudy Giuliani, President Trump and others are trying to spin the developments, asserting as always that there is nothing about collusion or the President. How one can read the “in coordination” language as not being related to Trump is astounding, but Giuliani stated: “There is no allegation of any wrongdoing against the president in the government’s charges against Mr. Cohen. It is clear that, as the prosecutor noted, Mr. Cohen’s actions reflect a pattern of lies and dishonesty over a significant period of time.” The Magic eight ball screams to the question, is Trump toast, “the answer is clear: yes.” Today was about magic eights.