After more than a year of investigation, interviews and indictments, President Donald Trump has been implicated in a federal criminal case set in motion by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Yesterday, his former fixer and personal attorney, Michael Cohen, pled guilty to campaign finance violations. He told a federal judge in Manhattan that it was then-candidate Trump who directed him to make payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels and former playboy model Karen McDougal in the run-up to the 2016 election to keep them quiet about affairs they say they had with Trump. Cohen now faces up to five years in prison, but his attorney also says they have information that could be of interest in the Russia investigation.
If all that wasn't big enough, just minutes after Cohen's plea, special counsel Robert Mueller scored a major victory in his case against former Trump Campaign Chair Paul Manafort. A jury found Manafort guilty of eight counts of tax fraud, bank fraud and hiding foreign bank accounts. But ahead of a rally last night in West Virginia, Trump was quick to distance himself from the whole thing. So what does this all really mean for the president? Is this really any kind of turning point in Mueller's investigation?
Adam Reilly, in for Jim Braude, was joined by attorney Bruce Singal, who worked alongside Mueller in the U.S. Attorney’s office in Boston and was named 2017 Mass Lawyers Weekly's lawyer of the year, and former Assistant U.S. Attorney Dan Small, who has worked with both Robert Mueller and Rudy Giuliani in the past.
