A federal judge on Friday set Dec. 7 as a key date for prosecutors to submit their reportedly explosive evidence of recent wrongdoing by the corrupt former Trump 2016 Campaign Chair Paul J. Manafort.
As evidence mounted of a conspiracy by President Trump's former aides to advance his business and election interests with the help of Russians, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson also set March 5 as a tentative sentencing date for Manafort. He pleaded guilty in September before Jackson, right, to extensive bank and tax fraud charges brought by Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III.
Our Justice Integrity Project covered Manafort's earlier trial in Virginia before another federal judge. A jury sitting in Alexandria convicted Manafort of massive tax and bank frauds that occurred for the most part before he joined the Trump campaign in March 2016. The evidence showed that he obtained more than $60 million in income, declared just $13 million, and obtained more than $21 million in fraudulent loans during the Trump presidential campaign.
Manafort, shown in a mug shot, pleaded guilty just before a second trial in Washington, DC of criminal charges based largely on his actions during the presidential campaign. Manafort, who is being held in a federal cell in Virginia pending sentencing, was reported this fall to be cooperating with authorities, seeking leniency.
But prosecutors accused him early last week of lying to them. Then Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani created another surprise by telling New York Times reporters last week that Manafort was coooperating with other defendants by sharing information through his attorneys even after his guilty plea. Commentators said they have rarely if ever heard of such actions, which could create legal problems for defense attorneys.
In sum, this is the week that the public could first see that the Mueller probe has transitioned to one targeting the president, his family and their finances with a ith a "laser" focus by Mueller's team, according to Georgetown law professor Paul Butler, who was speaking to an MSNBC host on Nov. 30.
"The President is in considerable legal jeopardy," continued Butler, a frequent MSNBC contributor who earlier in the day had sat next to this reporter in the public gallery of Judge Jackson's courtroom. The crimes committed by president, Butler said in summarizing the week's disclosures, might include obstruction of justice, fraud and campaign finance violations.
The growing pressures on Trump include those from his former longtime personal attorney Michael Cohen, now a government witness. Prosecutors announced on Thursday an additional guilty plea by Cohen, whose confession implicated both Trump and an unidentified member of the president's family in Russian-linked business planning during the presidential campaign. Cohen's legal team released the next day on Nov. 30 a memo arguing that his cooperation has been so extensive that he should receive leniency.
Trump as reacted to growing pressure by prosecutors and their witnesses by denouncing the Mueller probe and failure of the U.S. Justice Department to imprison Trump's own political enemies.
Trump retweeted this week, for example, the adjoining graphic by conservative commentators portraying as criminals former Presidents Obama and Clinton, and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, among others.
The targets shown behind bars included Mueller and Deputy Attorney Gen. Rod Rosenstein, both of whom are Republicans and career prosecutors who won their current posts under Trump's own administration.
As noted by CNN in Donald Trump, Internet troll, the president's message to his tens of millions of Twitter followers seemingly endorsed the argument "Now that Russia's collusion is a proven lie, when do the trials for treason begin?"
Meanwhile, Trump denounced "McCarthyite" tactics by prosecutors. Trump failed to note that his late mentor, fixer and attorney Roy Cohn had previously served during the early 1950s as the chief counsel of Sen. Joe McCarthy (R-WI), with Cohn using his acknowledged legal skills in such a nasty, vindicative and demogagic manner as to help make term "McCarthyite" notorious at least as much as its namesake.
As president, Trump has complained that he needs a "Roy Cohn" to attack his enemies in the Justice Department, a stance that further undermines Trump's attempt to play the victim of appointees under his own administration.
Such actions and the accumulating evidence against Trump and his inner-circle paint an appalling portrait of the administration's corruption, incompetence and anti-American conduct. The scope is without parallel at high levels of government in recent decades, including the Watergate scandals.
That evidence is fast accumulating in the public eye following a hiatus from mid-September to early November. Justice Department policy discourages politically sensitive indictments shortly before federal elections. But the absence of new disclosures during that period does not mean no evidence exists.
Right after the election, Trump tried to assert new control over Mueller by appointing a new acting attorney general, Matthew Whitaker. But critics promptly challenged Trump's ability under the Constitution to appoint a Cabinet secretary without Senate confirmation in a non-emergency situation, especially one involved in so many conflicts of interest and scandals as Whitaker.
The Justice Integrity Project excerpts each day major news articles and commentaries about the Mueller probe for placement on a special subsite here. Shown below this column in an appendix are selected recent news items from that site.
Last week's major developments included continuing revelations regarding Cohen's disclosures against the Trump team and about Whitaker's oft-stated opposition to Mueller and Democrats — and Whitaker's own vulnerability to challenges on both his legal status as an unconfirmed nominee and a director previously of a scam company that the Federal Trade Commission fined $26 million. The Wall Street Journal has reported that Whitaker is now under criminal investigation by the FBI that he ostensibly directs.