What the Manafort Guilty Verdict Means

Even with yesterday's guilty plea by Michael Cohne, Trump's long time fixer and consigliere, and the federal jury conviction of Trump campaign chair, publicly, Trump continues to bleat and shout that the entire Russiagate investigation is a "witch hunt" and that there is no proof of "collusion" with Russia.  The growing list of indictments, guilty pleas and now Manafort conviction underscore that the investigation is anything but a witch hunt and on the issue of collusion, its a case of "not yet," but the trend in that direction is growing.  Cohen  has already implied that Trump had prior knowledge of the hacking of the DNC and Hillary Clinton's emails.  If he can provide documentation and/or audio tapes, Trump's goose could well be cooked.  Meanwhile, one cannot help but wonder what is wrong with Trump's base.  Is their racial hatred and terror over perceived loss of white privilege that they will continue to believe Trump's lies simply because he stokes their resentments and hate? Trump has operated for years as little better than a crime boss, yet evangelical Christians remain his strongest supporters.  What is wrong with them.  What does Mike Pence know and when did he learn it?  An article in the New York Times looks at what the Manafort guilty plea means and where Trump's legal woes may be headed.  Here rare excerpts:

With Tuesday’s convictions in the criminal trial of President Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, has struck another blow in his investigation: five guilty pleas, 32 indicted individuals, 187 charges revealing startling evidence of Russia’s 2016 attack on our democracy, and now the conviction of one of the top operators in the Trump campaign orbit. Mr. Manafort’s conviction on eight separate counts means he could spend the rest of his life in prison.

The conviction conclusively and publicly demonstrates what many of us have said since the start of the investigation: This is no “witch hunt.” It instead is one of the most successful special counsel investigations in history. Coming alongside the guilty plea by Michael Cohen, the president’s former lawyer, implicating the president in campaign finance violations, it was a very bad day for Mr. Trump.

Mr. Manafort’s conviction cannot be diminished by arguing, as Mr. Trump and his coterie are fond of doing, that the misconduct was unrelated to the Trump campaign or Russian “collusion.” On the contrary, the trial evidence included Mr. Manafort’s close ties to pro-Russia forces and his desperate financial straits as he “volunteered” his time for the next president. The trial revealed how willing Mr. Manafort was to corruptly leverage his position of influence over Mr. Trump during the campaign for his own personal benefit. He offered briefings to a pro-Russia Ukrainian oligarch and dangled a position in the Trump administration in front of a banker who provided him a loan for which he would not otherwise have qualified.

The conviction also shows the caliber of the foe that President Trump is facing as he decides whether or not to sit for an interview with Mr. Mueller focusing on obstruction of justice. While we had already believed that Mr. Trump was unlikely to voluntarily sit for an interview, Tuesday’s verdict makes that interview even less probable.

[Mueller’s] win in the Manafort case sends Mr. Trump the message that the special counsel and his team have the will and the ability to win a battle over a subpoena. Like in the Manafort case, the law is on their side. In United States v. Nixon, the Supreme Court unanimously held that a president cannot use executive privilege to withhold tape recordings of his words. There is no reason that the same principle should not also apply to their live utterance.

Mr. Manafort’s conviction should also send chills down the spines of other potential defendants, possibly including the president’s son Donald Trump Jr. and his informal adviser Roger Stone. . . . They would be wise to study the Manafort trial as a preview of the prosecutions that could emerge next. As the legal pressure builds on these major figures, there could well be a corresponding increase in their desire to cooperate with the investigation. This pressure has already paid dividends to Mr. Mueller's investigation: Mr. Cohen entered a plea agreement on Tuesday afternoon on charges related to campaign-finance violations and bank and tax fraud.

The conviction is also bad news for [Trump] the president because it increases the pressure on Mr. Manafort to cooperate with investigators. He has a second trial coming shortly in Washington, D.C., which could add even more time to what will likely be a substantial sentence — and Mr. Mueller reportedly has much more evidence to present to jurors in that trial than he did in the trial that just concluded.

Nor can Mr. Manafort simply wait for a presidential pardon.  . . . But should Mr. Trump pardon him, Mr. Manafort should expect state attorneys general to pick up under applicable state laws the threads of corruption and tax fraud that Mr. Mueller has already woven together. Unlike the federal crimes for which he has been convicted, state crimes cannot be wiped away with a presidential pardon. The risk of state charges maintains the pressure on Mr. Manafort to cooperate — especially after Tuesday’s conviction revealed what jurors think of his questionable business practices and other activities.

A pardon for Mr. Manafort could also end up inflicting more harm on the Trump presidency than any of the other allegedly obstructive acts Mr. Trump has so far undertaken. The Constitution and the laws of our country do not allow Mr. Trump to dangle the possibility of, or explicitly offer, pardons with corrupt intent. . . . . If he or his representatives had gone further and actually promised or offered pardons to Mr. Manafort or other potential Mueller witnesses to prevent or change their testimony, as some reports suggest, that could support bribery charges as well.

I find Trump morally disgusting.  I look forward to the day when his supporters will be forced to face that they have supported a foul and dangerous individual and that their pretense of patriotism through their support of him is nothing more than bullshit masking their own foul motivations.

Manafort is Screwed — and Trump Knows It

Having worked with the FBI as a expert witness and/or consultant on several occasions and one large bank fraud/wire fraud case in particular, I know first hand that it is rare that a prosecution case will be filed unless there is an extremely high expectation that the defendant will be convicted. True, the FBI doesn't always prevail in its case, but their loss rate is very low.  Applying these realities to the ongoing trial of Paul Manafort, it is reasonable to expect Manafort will likely be convicted for tax fraud, bank fraud and/or related  charges. Then the question becomes what Manafort will offer Mueller in an effort to negotiate a lesser sentence. This latter point is what worries Der Trumpenführer the most.  If there was a conspiracy with Russians to tilt the 2016 presidential election to Trump, odds appear good that Manafort was the nexus for information sharing and outright conspiracy.  A piece in The Week looks at Manafort's prospects and why Trump is ranting and raving via Twitter.  Here are highlights:

The trial of Paul Manafort, President Trump's former campaign chair, is officially underway. The many charges against him include tax and bank fraud. Special Counsel Robert Mueller likely has a strong case against Manafort, since the federal government rarely takes charges to court otherwise. But another way of knowing that the trial is unlikely to end well for Manafort is the tweetstorm by his former boss, in which Trump cursed Mueller and distanced himself from Manafort. Aside from demonstrating general contempt for legal restraint, Trump's threats portray a president who knows his former campaign chair is guilty, and is worried about what that means for him.

The most notable revelations from the first few days of Manafort's trial were about his lavish lifestyle.

But what's important is not what Manafort bought, it's how he paid for it all. He spent nearly $1 million at the exclusive Manhattan boutique Alan Couture, and nearly all of those purchases were made by wire transfers from foreign accounts. According to a salesperson, Manafort was the only customer to pay this way. His spending on homes was also generally done through secret accounts.

The prosecution's theory is that Manafort used secret offshore accounts to fund his lavish lifestyle because he was hiding money for tax purposes and submitting fraudulent loan applications. Whether further evidence will persuade the jury remains to be seen, but it is enormously unlikely that all of this was on the level.

[Trump] The president knows this, and it has him worried.

As Manafort was in federal court, Trump engaged in one of his patented Twitter tantrums, railing against the prosecution. He did not claim that Manafort would be vindicated and found innocent. Rather, he tweeted that "this is a terrible situation and Attorney General Jeff Sessions should stop this Rigged Witch Hunt right now, before it continues to stain our country any further." . .  .  . that Trump would encourage his attorney general to stop an investigation that potentially implicates his own campaign is disturbing nonetheless.

Trump also played the victim with respect to Manafort.  . . . . It's not exactly shocking that someone who had extensive ties to Eastern European oligarchs and plutocrats and agreed to nominally serve as Trump's campaign manager for free would be up to his neck in shady behavior.

Trump is nonetheless worried, as he should be. As David Eckles-Wade argues at Reuters, the Manafort trial is ultimately — if indirectly — "about how Russia moves money and buys influence." It seems that, owing to his lavish lifestyle, Manafort was in serious debt when he agreed to run Trump's campaign "for free." Considering his extensive ties to the Kremlin and his surreptitious meetings with Russians during the 2016 campaign, the implications of Manafort being found guilty are obvious.

Manafort's trial will not in itself prove collaboration between the Trump campaign and Russian electoral meddling. But it would be a major step in that direction, which is precisely why Trump wants Mueller's investigation shut down.

I hope Manafort is found guilty and ends up facing the rest of his life in prison.  I also hope that at some point he opts to spill his guts in order to save his hide and set Trump up for impeachment or worse.  

DOJ: Manafort Suspected As “Back Channel” To Russia

With rampant speculation that Michael Cohen will flip on Donald Trump and cooperate with the Mueller investigation - a piece in Vanity Fair notes that "The question being asked is not whether Trump or Cohen committed any crimes, but whether Cohen will flip on his boss when prosecutors turn up the heat" - several sources are reporting that a representative of the Department of Justice  has stated that the Mueller investigation was justified in investigating and prosecuting Paul Manafort because Manafort is thought to have been the back channel connecting the Trump campaign with Russian intelligence operatives seeking to throw the 2016 presidential election to Trump.  Here are highlights from Bloomberg on the issue:

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s interest in former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort stemmed in part from his suspected role as a “back channel” between the campaign and Russians intent on meddling in the election, a Justice Department lawyer told a judge.

The disclosure by U.S. prosecutors came Thursday during a hearing on whether Mueller exceeded his authority in indicting Manafort on charges of laundering millions of dollars while acting as an unregistered agent of the Ukrainian government. Manafort’s lawyers say those alleged crimes have nothing to do with Mueller’s central mission -- to determine whether anyone in the Trump campaign had links to the Russian government.

Defense attorney Kevin Downing argued anew to U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson in Washington that even Mueller’s appointment order permitting him to probe “any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation” wouldn’t cover the political consulting work that Manafort did in Ukraine for a decade.

But Justice Department attorney Michael Dreeben said prosecutors were justified in investigating Manafort because he had served as Trump’s campaign chairman.

“He had long-standing ties to Russia-backed politicians,” Dreeben told Jackson. “Did they provide back channels to Russia? Investigators will naturally look at those things.”

Prosecutors hadn’t previously used such explicit language to describe their suspicions about Manafort. In a previous court filing, Mueller also cited business ties between Manafort and the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska.

Any investigation of links between Russia and the Trump campaign “would naturally cover ties that a former Trump campaign manager had to Russian-associated political operatives, Russian-backed politicians, and Russian oligarchs,” prosecutors said in an April 2 filing.

“It would also naturally look into any interactions they may have had before and during the campaign to plumb motives and opportunities to coordinate and to expose possible channels for surreptitious communications,” prosecutors wrote. “And prosecutors would naturally follow the money trail from Manafort’s Ukrainian consulting activities. Because investigation of those matters was authorized, so was prosecution.” Mueller has charged 19 people, including 13 Russians, since his appointment. Five have pleaded guilty, including Rick Gates, a former Trump deputy campaign chairman and longtime business associate of Manafort. Gates is cooperating with Mueller’s investigation.

Aside from the Washington indictment, Manafort is also charged in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, with bank and tax fraud.

Dreeben, who is helping Mueller with the investigation, has argued more than 100 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court as deputy solicitor general.

Michael Cohen's - and Trump's? - Serious Legal Jeopardy

We can expect more lies and posturing from the White House today in the wake of an FBI raid of Trump consigliere Michael Cohen's home, law office and hotel room (where he was staying during home renovations) that included seizing Cohen's computer, records and emails.  This is NOT something that happens with regularity and the fact that a warrant was issued by a federal judge is telling because the U.S. Attorney's office would have had to convince a judge that (i) there is a likelihood that a crime occurred, and (ii) there was a strong likelihood that evidence would be destroyed or go missing if the normal course of issuing a subpoena had been followed.  Having been a witness for federal prosecutors on two occasions and worked as a consultant on another case, these folks do NOT fool around.  Cohen - and possibly Trump - is in serious legal jeopardy as a column in the Washington Post lays out.  Here are highlights:

When your lawyers need lawyers, it’s usually a bad sign. When your lawyers have their offices and homes raided, it’s a really bad sign. News that federal investigators on Monday took the extraordinary step of executing a search warrant at the legal office of Michael Cohen, President Trump’s longtime personal attorney, indicates that Cohen is suddenly in serious legal jeopardy of his own. And although the investigation is not directly related to the Mueller probe, it’s yet another example of the legal walls closing in on one of the people closest to Trump — someone who may have a wealth of information about the president’s own conduct. The first thing to note about this striking development is that the warrant was not obtained by Mueller himself. Whatever the subject matter of this particular investigation, it apparently falls outside of Mueller’s jurisdiction and thus resulted in his referral to the New York prosecutors. So we know the potential crimes that led to the search today do not directly relate to Mueller’s inquiry into any conspiracy with Russians to influence the election or related crimes such as obstruction of the special counsel’s investigation. We also know that a search warrant, unlike a grand jury subpoena, requires prosecutors to go before a federal judge to demonstrate probable cause that a crime has been committed and evidence of that crime can be found in the premises to be searched. Before approving a search of a lawyer’s office, a judge would want to be satisfied that there was some substance behind the prosecutors’ allegations. This is not just some prosecutorial fishing expedition; it bears the imprimatur of a federal judge. This was not just any search warrant; that the raid took place at a lawyer’s office further highlights the seriousness of the investigation. Searches of an attorney’s office are extremely rare and are not favored, due to their potential to impinge on the attorney-client relationship. Prosecutors must jump through multiple hoops to get such a warrant approved, both within their own office and at the criminal division of Main Justice. (Notably, this would likely have included approval by Trump’s own guy, the new interim U.S. attorney for the Southern District, Geoffrey S. Berman, who was just appointed by Attorney General Jeff Sessions this past January.) Approval of a search warrant suggests prosecutors were able to demonstrate not only the gravity of the potential case but also the risk that evidence might be destroyed or otherwise go missing if they pursued a less aggressive option. Cohen, and perhaps the president, will likely argue that this raid violates the attorney-client privilege. . . . . There is an exception to the attorney-client privilege if communications to an attorney are used in furtherance of a crime or fraud; that could come into play here as well. And documents related to anything Cohen did on his own — after all, Trump has deniedknowing about the payment to Daniels — are likely not privileged if they do not contain attorney-client communications. Documents are not automatically privileged simply because they passed through an attorney’s hands. There may well be litigation concerning whether particular records seized during this search are protected by privilege. But seizing the records now allows prosecutors to ensure that the integrity of the evidence is maintained while those legal issues are sorted out.

Cohen, someone extremely close to Trump and who has been known as the president’s “fixer,” appears to have serious legal problems. If federal prosecutors feel they have enough on you to execute a search warrant, it’s never a good sign — just ask Paul Manafort. . . . . we can’t rule out the possibility that his own legal troubles could induce him [Cohen] to cooperate in the Russia investigation.

FBI Raids Office of Trump’s Personal Lawyer

Trump and consigliere, Michael Cohen.

In previous posts I have noted the difficulty that Donald Trump has experienced finding reputable legal counsel to represent him in the Russiagate investigation.  The reasons are many, not the least being that having Trump as a client could get one possible disbarred or, worse yet, criminally prosecuted due to the questionable things client Trump might demand.  Today, the FBI raided the offices of Michael Cohen, Trump's long time personal lawyer and, if stories swirling around the Stormy Daniels  scandal, equivalent of a Mafia don's consigliere.   In addition to Cohen's office, federal agents raided also raided Cohen's Park Avenue hotel residence.  Among the materials seized were emails, tax documents and business records.  As expected, Der Trumpenführer ranted and raved about the raid being " a witch hunt" and "disgraceful" even as many wonder what damaging information Cohen's materials may yield.  First, the New York Times looks at the raid itself.  Here are highlights:

The F.B.I. raided the Rockefeller Center office and Park Avenue hotel room of President Trump’s longtime personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, on Monday morning, seizing business records, emails and documents related to several topics, including a payment to a pornographic film actress.

Mr. Trump, in an extraordinarily angry response, lashed out hours later at what a person briefed on the matter said was an investigation into possible bank fraud by Mr. Cohen. Mr. Trump accused his own Justice Department of perpetrating a “witch hunt” and asserted that the F.B.I. “broke into” Mr. Cohen’s office.

It is not clear how the F.B.I. entered Mr. Cohen’s office, but agents had a search warrant and typically would have presented it to office personnel to be let in. The documents identified in the warrant date back years, according to a person briefed on the search.

The prosecutors obtained the search warrant after receiving a referral from the special counsel in the Russia investigation, Robert S. Mueller III, according to Mr. Cohen’s lawyer, who called the search “completely inappropriate and unnecessary.” The search does not appear to be directly related to Mr. Mueller’s investigation, but most likely resulted from information that he had uncovered and gave to prosecutors in New York.

In his tirade against the F.B.I., Mr. Trump mused about the possibility that he might soon fire Mr. Mueller. Last June, the president vented internally about wanting to fire Mr. Mueller, but was talked out of it. The president once again railed against Jeff Sessions, the attorney general, for recusing himself in the Russia inquiry, and blasted the F.B.I. for failing to investigate Hillary Clinton, “where there are crimes.” He criticized Rod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, who is overseeing the Russia investigation, . . .

In order to obtain a search warrant, prosecutors must convince a federal judge that agents are likely to discover evidence of criminal activity.

As for the basis behind the raid, the Washington Post fleshes out where prosecutors may be headed, including bank fraud. Here is a taste:

Michael Cohen, the longtime attorney of President Trump, is under federal investigation for possible bank fraud, wire fraud and campaign finance violations, according to three people with knowledge of the case.

FBI agents on Monday raided Cohen’s Manhattan office, home and hotel room as part of the investigation, seizing records about Cohen’s clients and personal finances. Among the records taken were those related to a 2016 payment Cohen made to adult-film star Stormy Daniels, who claims to have had a sexual encounter with Trump, according to another person familiar with the investigation.

Investigators took Cohen’s computer, phone and personal financial records, including tax returns, as part of the search of his office at Rockefeller Center, the second person said.

In a dramatic and broad seizure, federal prosecutors collected communications between Cohen and his clients — including those between the lawyer and Trump, according to both people.

One person familiar with the probe said investigators have been gathering material on Cohen for weeks, including his bank records.

Two of the potential crimes being investigated — bank fraud and wire fraud — suggest prosecutors have some reason to think Cohen may have misled bankers about why he was using particular funds or may have improperly used banks in the transfer of funds.Cohen has acknowledged facilitating a $130,000 payment in October 2016 to Daniels, who claims she had a sexual relationship with Trump in 2006.

Cohen has said he used a home-equity line of credit to finance the payment to Daniels and said that neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign reimbursed him for the payment.

Banks don’t usually require much explanation from customers about how they use such credit lines. However, Cohen may have been asked to provide explanation for the large-dollar transfers he made when he moved the money to a shell company and then to a lawyer for Daniels.

“A search warrant for a law office is extremely rare,” said Stephen Gillers, a professor at the New York University School of Law. “Lawyers are given the courtesy of producing documents in response to a subpoena or a request unless the government believes a lawyer will destroy or conceal the objects of the search.”

To serve a search warrant on a practicing attorney, federal prosecutors are required to obtain approval from top Justice Department officials. That means the acting U.S. attorney in Manhattan, Geoffrey S. Berman, who was appointed to his role by Sessions in January, as well as Justice Department officials in Washington, probably signed off.