Paul Manafort, former Trump campaign manager, is seven months into a four-year jail sentence for financial fraud. Michael Flynn, who was previously President Trump’s national security adviser, is awaiting sentencing after admitting that he lied to the FBI about his contacts with Russian officials. Michael Cohen, longtime Trump fixer, reported to the Otisville Federal Correctional Institution northwest of New York City in May.
And now, Roger Stone can be added to the list of political operatives, lawyers, and hangers-on whose close relationship with Trump has cost them their reputation and their liberty.
On Friday, he became the latest member of Trumpworld to be convicted on charges stemming from the Mueller investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
A Washington jury found the self-proclaimed “dirty trickster” guilty on seven counts of lying to Congress, obstruction, and witness tampering.
It makes him the latest casualty of an unorthodox administration that has burned through senior officials and aides and seen the convictions of six Trump associates.
Rick Gates, a former political consultant, pleaded guilty to conspiracy against the United States as part of a plea bargain, and George Papadopoulos, a former foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign, served 12 days in prison for giving false statements to the FBI.
The timing of Stone’s conviction could not be worse, increasing scrutiny of Trump’s associates on the second day of the House Intelligence Committee’s public impeachment hearings.
Michael Flynn
George Papadopoulos
Michael Cohen
Paul Manafort
Roger StoneAll the President’s men are convicted criminals. You are the company you keep. https://t.co/mwRCdvBO8S
— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) November 15, 2019
Democrats wasted no time in saying the guilty verdicts were a reflection of the president’s own reputation.
“All the President’s men are convicted criminals,” said California Sen. Kamala Harris, who is running for the party’s 2020 nomination. “You are the company you keep.”
The convictions and guilty pleas have provided a steady line of attack for critics of Trump who want to portray his administration as a giant criminal enterprise.
But Trump allies said some of the convictions, such as those of Manafort and Cohen, had little or nothing to do with Trump’s campaign or time in office. Instead, their presence in Trump’s orbit had put them in investigators’ crosshairs, as the spiraling inquiries that spun off from the $32 million Mueller investigation brought to light business dealings that in some cases predated the president’s run for office.
Sam Nunberg, who worked on the Trump 2016 campaign, said the cases of Manafort and Cohen were different from that of Stone, who was convicted only on issues related to his attempt to find dirt on Hillary Clinton.
“Manafort committed tax fraud, Michael committed tax fraud,” he said. “They didn’t have a leg to stand on.”
Manafort was found guilty on eight counts of filing false tax returns, bank fraud, and failing to disclose a foreign bank account, and later pleaded guilty to further counts as part of a plea deal. The jury heard how he tried to hide his income from federal authorities and defraud banks.
In the case of Stone, said Nunberg, he was seen as guilty by association in a city where only about 36% of voters backed Trump in 2016.
“You can’t get a fair trial in Washington, D.C.,” he said. “Was that a jury of his peers?”
And the investigations are not over yet. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan are running a fine-tooth comb over Rudy Giuliani’s business dealings in Ukraine, according to a string of recent reports, after two of his associates were charged with illegally funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars to several American officials and a pro-Trump political action committee.
As one New York lobbyist put it, “You start poring through all his work and taxes over the years … and who hasn’t made a mistake somewhere?”
