In the span of about an hour Tuesday, two big dominoes fell in President Trump's world. First, a jury found former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort guilty on eight felony charges of financial crimes, including two counts of bank fraud and five counts of tax evasion. While the jury was unable to reach a unanimous verdict on the other 10 counts against Manafort, Tuesday's verdict combines to carry a sentence of 240 years for the 69-year-old.
Minutes after the verdict against Manafort was read aloud in a courtroom in Alexandria, Virginia, Trump's former personal lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to eight felony charges of his own, in a Manhattan courtroom. Manafort's indictment had resulted from Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian election meddling in 2016, and his charges largely stem from work he did abroad before he joined Trump's team. But Mueller's team had referred Cohen's case to New York-based federal prosecutors, and Cohen on Tuesday admitted to tax fraud and violating campaign finance laws as a result of their investigation.
The president, meanwhile, was several miles above the fray Tuesday — but only literally. Trump boarded Air Force One on his way to a rally in West Virginia virtually simultaneously to the two cases reaching their ominous end:
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Cohen specifically said he'd committed his crimes "in coordination with and at the direction of a candidate for federal office," which is inevitably Trump. White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters she "[didn't] have anything" to say regarding the Manafort and Cohen cases. As for the president himself, well, Air Force One is outfitted with WiFi, but he has yet to respond.
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