By Prarthana Mitra
For the first time, last week, the US Justice Department said that they had connected the president to a federal crime. This brings him the closest to impeachment or indictment since his election. Federal prosecutors in New York said that Donald Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen had acted on the president’s direction when he broke the law, referring to the two hush payments that the latter made using campaign funds to two women in exchange for their silence about the then would-be president’s sex scandals.
On Friday, prosecutors wrote, “In particular, and as Cohen himself has now admitted, with respect to both payments, he acted in coordination with and at the direction of Individual-1 [reference to President Trump].”
Cohen’s list of crimes grows: Hush money payment, possible collusion
These payments to the women happened during the 2016 presidential campaign when Trump’s campaign was threatened by claims of extramarital affairs made by both women. Cohen’s crime though was the unlawful disbursement of campaign funds to influence the elections, a felony for which Cohen pled guilty and is likely to receive a “substantial” prison sentence of roughly four years.
The payments made to porn actress Stephanie Clifford, better known by her alias Stormy Daniels, and former Playboy model Karen McDougal ahead of the 2016 elections will push House Democrats to investigate the president next year because federal law requires that any payments made for the purposes of influencing an election be reported in campaign finance disclosures, which had not been done in this case.
These women were paid secretly to ensure that they stayed quiet about their affairs with Trump using campaign funds. The aim was to “protect” Trump’s image during the presidential campaign. Despite the aim and the source of these funds, these transactions were not disclosed in a direct violation of the law.
In August, Cohen pled guilty to these campaign finance violations, detailing the illegal operation wherein he was directed by “Individual 1”, a reference to Trump in the papers filed, to silence both the women who claimed to have had affairs with Trump.
Trump, who denied having the affairs, reportedly paid $130,000 as part of a nondisclosure agreement signed days before the 2016 election. Till April 2018, he vehemently denied knowing anything about Cohens payments to Daniels, though his account has varied multiple times since then.
A year before the elections, the National Enquirers parent company, American Media Inc., reportedly reached out to Cohen and Trump to offer “help with negative stories about Trumps relationships with women by buying the rights to the stories. After McDougal contacted the Enquirer, the tabloid reached a $150,000 deal with her in 2016, for crushing her story of a 2006 affair. Cohen promised the company that they would be reimbursed, according to court documents. He also released an audio recording this year which allegedly captures Trump and Cohen discussing buying the rights to McDougals story from the Enquirers parent company. Trumps lawyers have said the payments were never made.
Charged with a total of eight crimes in August, Cohen stands guilty of numerous counts of tax fraud, presenting false statements to the bank, and, most recently, of lying to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation team about his and Trump campaign’s contacts with Moscow.
How does this tie in with the Russia investigation?
Last week, Cohen pled guilty to lying to Congress about the extent and duration of business discussions between Trump and Russian nationals in 2016, revealing that the presumptive Republican nominee was more involved in the potential business deal during the presidential campaign than was previously known. Cohen admitted that talks about the Moscow-based Trump Tower project continued well until June 2016, after Trump was already running for president and around the time Russian efforts to disrupt the 2016 elections were ramped up.
The same month, a hack into the Democratic National Committee presented the first public evidence of Moscow’s interference. This infiltration occurred three months before Russian operatives hacked the emails of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta, according to a grand jury indictment made public this year. Thousands of Podesta’s private emails were stolen and sent to WikiLeaks to distribute and consequently undermine the Democratic campaign.
It is, however, unclear if Trump’s associates and other members of the Trump Organisation were privy to the tampering efforts.
Mueller, who has been probing into Trump’s role in conspiring with Russia to swing the 2016 election in Republican favour, outlined a previously undisclosed set of overtures on Monday. He stated that the president’s former attorney had spoken to a Russian lobbyist back in 2015 who had offered “political synergy” with the Trump campaign. Cohen also disclosed that Trump and his family members had been briefed on the discussions.
So far, 34 people have faced criminal charges that stem from the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. This includes Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who was convicted of several counts of financial fraud in August and faces upto 10 years in prison.
Another cooperating and potentially crucial witness for Mueller, Manafort was recently accused by prosecutors of lying in breach of his plea agreement. This emboldened Trump to renew the possibility of granting Manafort a presidential pardon.
What does this mean for Trump?
This is the first time that prosecutors have connected Trump to a federal crime, paving the way for House Democrats to rein in the president by opening an investigation into his involvement in the campaign fund violations. In the court filing ahead of Cohen’s sentencing, prosecutors said the former lawyer and fixer had arranged the secret payments at the height of the 2016 campaign in coordination with and at the direction of Trump, corroborating their belief in Cohen’s testimony and claims.
There is no longer any ambiguity about whether or not the prosecutors believe that Cohens act was criminal, or that it was carried out to benefit Trump politically, or that Trump was directly involved. Friday’s filing has resulted in a remarkable disclosure that can have political and legal ramifications on a presidency that already faces multiple investigations, most notably this Russia probe.
How did the Trump administration respond?
In a Saturday morning tweet, Trump seemed ignorant of the ramifications of the prosecutors’ findings, saying: AFTER TWO YEARS AND MILLIONS OF PAGES OF DOCUMENTS (and a cost of over $30,000,000), NO COLLUSION!”
Late on Friday, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders also downplayed the significance of the connection saying, “The government’s filings in Mr. Cohen’s case tell us nothing of value that wasn’t already known. Mr. Cohen has repeatedly lied and as the prosecution has pointed out to the court, Mr. Cohen is no hero.”
What’s next?
Noting Cohen’s years-long willingness to break the law, the filing undermined his public proclamations of assisting in the investigation.
“He was motivated to do so by personal greed, and repeatedly used his power and influence for deceptive ends,” the report read. Cohen will be sentenced on Wednesday; prosecutors are hoping for a minimum of a four-year-long sentence.
The filing did not, however, directly accuse the president of committing a crime, but it does make it harder for Trump to disprove that he tried to influence the election, and his claims that he didn’t know the payments were illegal. For now, we know that Trump was secretly negotiating a deal with Russia worth hundreds of millions of dollars while running for president, and while Russia was actively working to help him get elected.
Furthermore, the documents suggest that the Mueller probe is gradually rounding up the president and his inner circle. The Justice Department on Monday clearly suggested that a good portion of Cohens extensive cooperation related to the heart of Muellers probe, that is, possible criminal violations related to contacts with Russian interests.
As the investigation adds more key pieces to the Russia puzzle and Mueller inches closer to establishing Trump’s ties to Moscow, the administration’s legal perils concern graver things than campaign finance violations.
The question that Mueller and his team have to definitively answer is whether Trump knew that the Russians were using underhanded means to ensure his election.
Prarthana Mitra is a staff writer at Qrius