{"id":178783,"date":"2018-08-21T18:04:00","date_gmt":"2018-08-21T23:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/08\/21\/busy-day\/"},"modified":"2018-08-21T18:04:00","modified_gmt":"2018-08-21T23:04:00","slug":"busy-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/08\/21\/busy-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Busy Day"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"border: 1px solid black; float: right; margin: 0px 10px; padding: 5px; text-align: center; width: 330px;\">\n<blockquote data-lang=\"en\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Eight. Eight Counts. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/sowxIlGXu8\">pic.twitter.com\/sowxIlGXu8<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Chris Geidner (@chrisgeidner) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/chrisgeidner\/status\/1032000984074076160?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">August 21, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><i>And the award for best tweet goes to\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/i.imgur.com\/8j808.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.imgur.com\/8j808.jpg\" width=\"320\" \/><\/a><br \/>And then there is this Doonesbury classic<\/i><\/div>\n<p>Trumpsters have not had a good today.<\/p>\n<p>First, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/08\/21\/us\/politics\/paul-manafort-trial-verdict.html\">Paul Manafort was convicted on 8 counts of fraud<\/a>, with the jury deadlocking on the remaining 10 counts.&nbsp; It still means that he is facing decades behind bars:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Paul  Manafort, President Trump\u2019s former campaign chairman, was convicted on  Tuesday in his financial fraud trial, bringing a dramatic end to a  politically charged case that riveted the capital.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">The  verdict was a victory for the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III,  whose prosecutors introduced extensive evidence that Mr. Manafort hid  millions of dollars in foreign accounts to evade taxes and lied to banks  repeatedly to obtain millions of dollars in loans.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">Mr.  Manafort was convicted of five counts of tax fraud, two counts of bank  fraud and one count of failure to disclose a foreign bank account. The  jury was unable to reach a verdict on the remaining 10 counts, and the  judge declared a mistrial on those charges.<\/p>\n<p>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n<p>Mr. Manafort faces a second criminal trial next month in Washington on  seven other charges brought by the special counsel, including  obstruction of justice, failure to register as a foreign agent and  conspiracy to launder money.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Bummer of a birth mark, Paul.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, former Trump lawyer, and fixer, Michael Cohen <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/08\/21\/nyregion\/michael-cohen-plea-deal-trump.html\">has pled guilty to campaign finance violations at the request as a yet unnamed candidate<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Michael  D. Cohen, President Trump\u2019s former lawyer, made the extraordinary  admission in court on Tuesday that Mr. Trump had directed him to arrange  payments to two women during the 2016 campaign to keep them from  speaking publicly about affairs they said they had with Mr. Trump.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">Mr.  Cohen acknowledged the illegal payments while pleading guilty to  breaking campaign finance laws and other charges, a litany of crimes  that revealed both his shadowy involvement in Mr. Trump\u2019s circle and his  own corrupt business dealings.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">He  told a judge in United States District Court in Manhattan that the  payments to the women were made \u201cin coordination with and at the  direction of a candidate for federal office.\u201d<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">\u201cI  participated in this conduct, which on my part took place in Manhattan,  for the principal purpose of influencing the election\u201d for president in  2016, Mr. Cohen said.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">The  plea represented a pivotal moment in the investigation into the  president, and the scene in the Manhattan courtroom was striking. Mr.  Cohen, a longtime lawyer for Mr. Trump \u2014 and loyal confidant \u2014 described  in plain-spoken language how Mr. Trump worked with him to cover up a  potential sex scandal that Mr. Trump feared would endanger his rising  candidacy.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The <i>New York Times<\/i> editorial board released an OP\/ED titled, &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/08\/21\/opinion\/manafort-cohen-guilty.html\">All the President\u2019s Crooks<\/a>.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I think that we shortly have a race to prosecutor by people trying to avoid jail time.<\/p>\n<p>I really hope that Cohen flips.<\/p>\n<p>This is almost too much schadenfreude.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Eight. Eight Counts. pic.twitter.com\/sowxIlGXu8 &mdash; Chris Geidner (@chrisgeidner) August 21, 2018 And the award for best tweet goes to\u2026\u2026\u2026 And then there is this Doonesbury classic Trumpsters have not had a good today. First, Paul Manafort was convicted on 8 counts of fraud, with the jury deadlocking on the remaining 10 counts.&nbsp; It still means &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[368,573,444,407,374,486],"class_list":["post-178783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-corruption","tag-donald-trump","tag-international-finance","tag-justice","tag-politics","tag-schadenfreude"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178783"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178783"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178783\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}