Former Federal Prosecutor Preet Bharara called it Law day. In one day the former campaign manager of President Trump was founded guilty of a series of crimes, not directly related to the President and the Presidents personal attorney pleaded guilty to a series of crimes, but in this case, the defendant Michael D Cohen also implicated the President in crimes.

 

Paul Manafort who was the campaign manager was found guilty in 8 of the 18 charges that had been charged in the Federal District Court in Alexandria. The jury could not reach a unanimous verdict on ten of the charges. The government could retry those charges but probably will not. Manafort had been charged by the office of Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller who was appointed to investigate potential crimes surrounding the election of President Trump after Trump had fired the Director of the FBI who was investigating the crime. Manafort was charged with various tax charges and bank charges primarily from the time he was working for the then Pro Russian Ukrainian government. Manafort was the Trump campaigns manager for four months including during the time of the Republican convention. Manafort’s conviction undermined the efforts of President Trump to claim that the Mueller investigation was a phony investigation or a waste of money. However, in the Manafort trial, there was no direct connection to President Trump.

This was not the case in the guilty plea for Michael D Cohen. While most of the counts that Cohen pled guilty to were also tax evasion charges, Cohen who was Trump's attorney and known as his fixer, was also charged with illegally paying money to hush up the stories of two women who were in the weeks before the election threatened to tell about extramarital encounters with candidate Trump. According to his plea, Cohen paid money to cover up the stories and did not report the expenditure, a clear violation of campaign finance laws. In addition, he fraudulently obtained a bank loan to make the payments. Cohen stated that he has done these action on behest of an unnamed candidate for high federal office( Trump). This was the first time in criminal court proceedings President Trump has directly been implicated in criminal activity.

The conviction of Manafort and the guilty plea by Cohen all took place during the same hour and was widely described by the media as the darkest hour of the Trump presidency. About an hour later it was announced the Duncan Hunter a Republican Congressman from California and an early Trump supporter and his wife were being charged with unlawfully using campaign funds for their own personal use.