Michael Cohen’s guilty plea is at least as bad, if not worse, for President Trump than Paul Manafort’s guilty verdict. Not only do the crimes that Cohen pleaded guilty to implicate Trump, but that plea may also pave the way for Trump to be deposed by Michael Avenatti. Generally, it’s bad news when your fixer pleads guilty and that is certainly true for Trump.
Cohen’s guilty plea described how he violated federal campaign finance law “in coordination with and at the direction of a federal candidate for office.” Those charges stem from payments made to former Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal and porn star Stephanie Clifford, who goes by Stormy Daniels. Both women received payments prior to the 2016 election to keep them quiet about affairs with Trump. According to Cohen’s plea, that money was “for the principle purpose of influencing the election.”
[Also read: Trump’s ‘bad week’: Manafort found guilty, Cohen enters plea deal]
Cohen didn’t need to drop any names for it to be obvious that that candidate he referenced was Donald Trump.
As seems likely based on the wording of the plea, Trump seems to have known about the payments in advance or agreed to them later. That means that he is directly implicated in a now proven crime. In short, Cohen’s plea puts Trump close to action — likely too close for the president to get away clean.
Additional fallout from the deal might be that Trump faces a deposition from Avenatti, Clifford’s lawyer. She had filed a lawsuit against Trump for breaking a nondisclosure agreement about their affair.
That lawsuit, however, had yet to progress as a judge had stayed the legal action as Cohen’s case was pending. Now that a guilty plea has been submitted, Clifford’s case can move forward and, with it, the potential for a deposition. As Avenatti tweeted on Tuesday, “The developments today… should also permit us to proceed with an expedited deposition of Trump under oath about what he knew, when he knew it, and what he did about it. We will disclose it all to the public.”
Even if Avenatti doesn’t get his expedited deposition any time soon, whatever Trump says under oath probably won’t be good for him, and, as Avenatti has promised, it’s all going to be public knowledge.
As it turns out, Trump didn’t need to be involved with Russia to have likely broken the law, all it took was a porn star and hush money. Unfortunately, this looks like only the beginning.
