Michael Cohen pleads guilty, names Donald Trump as an unindicted co-conspirator
Michael Cohen cut a plea deal today, and he pleaded guilty to eight different felonies. Most of them are related to his various financial fraud activities. But when it came to the final charge of illegally paying two women to keep quiet during the election, when Cohen pleaded guilty, he specified that Donald Trump (referring to him as “the candidate”) instructed him to do so. That means Donald Trump just became an unindicted co-conspirator in a criminal case where his fellow co-conspirator just pleaded guilty and incriminated him.
So now Donald Trump is officially into Richard Nixon territory, as he was the last President of the United States to be named an unindicted co-conspirator during the Watergate criminal investigation. There had been a lot of debate earlier today among the media as to whether or not Cohen was technically “cooperating” with prosecutors as part of his deal. But now we’ve got something far better, and far more immediate.
Donald Trump and his spokespeople may try to cling to the fact that he’s merely been named an unindicted co-conspirator in a criminal case that has nothing to do with the Trump-Russia scandal. But Trump was nonetheless trying to illegally alter the outcome of the election when he instructed Cohen to pay these women off in violation of federal election laws. More importantly, when Cohen pleaded guilty to having committed a crime at Trump’s instruction, he made clear that he’s certainly going to cooperate on the Trump-Russia stuff.
This of course was all playing out even as the jury in the Paul Manafort trial announced that it had found him guilty on eight felony charges, likely ensuring that Manafort will go to prison for the rest of his natural life. More importantly, Special Counsel Robert Mueller is having his best day ever. He got a multi-count conviction against Donald Trump’s campaign chairman, just as Donald Trump’s longtime fixer named Trump as an unindicted co-conspirator.
