We’re closing the liveblog for the day. Here’s a look at what’s unfolded in the aftermath of the verdicts against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and ex-lawyer Michael Cohen.
Trump lashed out at Cohen (“I would strongly suggest that you don’t retain the services of Michael Cohen!”) and praised Manafort (“He refused to break”). Trump again called the Russia investigation a “witch hunt”.
In an interview with Fox & Friends, Trump denied knowing about payments made by Cohen during the presidential campaign to silence two women who said they had affairs with Trump until “later on”. But he said the payments “came from me” and claimed that they were not illegal.
At the White House press briefing, Sarah Huckabee Sanders claimed: “The president has done nothing wrong. There are no charges against him. There has been no collusion.” She would not rule out the possibility that Trump could pardon Manafort. And when asked if Trump has lied to the American people, Sanders replied: “that’s a ridiculous accusation”.
In a series of interviews on Wednesday, Michael Cohen’s lawyer Lanny Davis said his client has information that would be of interest to special counsel Robert Mueller about a Russian conspiracy to “corrupt American democracy” and “a failure to report that knowledge to the FBI.” He also said Cohen would “not accept” a pardon from Trump.
Democrats called for postponing the Supreme Court confirmation hearing for judge Brett Kavanaugh in the wake of Cohen’s guilty plea. Republicans said the hearing will go ahead as planned.
A new report says Manafort went to Kyrgyzstan and promoted Russian interests.
Cohen is fast becoming investigators most sought-after witness.
Congressional investigators have said they want to hear from him. And on Wednesday Cohen was slapped with a subpoena in a separate investigation into Trump’s charitable foundation.
The New York state attorney general, Barbara Underwood, sued the Donald J Trump charitable foundation, Donald Trump and three of his children in June for allegedly violating state charity laws.
“The foundation is little more than an empty shell that functions with no oversight from its board of directors,” the lawsuit alleged.
Prosecutors allege that Trump had not contributed to the charity since 2008 but used millions contributed tax-free by outside donors as “little more than a checkbook” to settle legal claims against his Mar-a-Lago resort and against Trump National Golf Club.
The suit additionally alleges that the charity paid $10,000 to buy a painting of Trump displayed at the Trump National Doral golf course, and that the charity operated as a wing of the Trump presidential campaign and not independently as a charity.
“Trump ran the foundation according to whim, rather than law,” the suit said.
The ceremony has concluded. Trump delivered remarks on Chapman’s gallantry and presented the medal of honor – the nation’s highest award for valor in combat – to the fallen airman’s family.
We’re tuning in now to a White House medal of honor ceremony, where Trump will posthumously award technical sergeant John Chapman, who was killed in 2002 trying to save a Navy Seal during an attack in Afghanistan. This would be an extremely surprising setting for the president to make any comments about the ongoing drama related to his former campaign manger and ex-lawyer but surprising doesn’t even begin to explain the last 24 hours.
The timeline of when Trump learned of the payments made by Cohen during the campaign to two women – porn actress Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal – to silence them from speaking publicly about affairs they say they had with Trump remains fluid.
In an interview with Fox & Friends on Wednesday, Trump says he learned of the payments “later on”. But in court on Tuesday, Cohen said he was directed to make the payments by Trump, who he identifies as an “unnamed candidate”.
Who is telling the truth? Hard to say.
Here’s what we know.
On April 6, 2018 Trump denied knowing about the $130,000 payment, telling reporters: “You’ll have to ask Michael Cohen. Michael is my attorney. You’ll have to ask Michael.” Days later, investigators raided Cohen’s offices and seized records related to the payments.
On July 24, 2018, Cohen’s lawyer gives CNN an audio recording of Cohen and Trump in which they discussed using American Media Inc, the parent company of the National Enquirer to pay off McDougal, indicating that Trump was aware of the efforts to pay her off.
On July 25 2018 Trump responds on Twitter: “What kind of a lawyer would tape a client? So sad! Is this a first, never heard of it before? Why was the tape so abruptly terminated (cut) while I was presumably saying positive things? I hear there are other clients and many reporters that are taped - can this be so? Too bad!”
On August 21, 2018, Cohen pleaded guilty to 8 counts, including two counts of violating campaign finance laws. Cohen said he acted “in coordination with and at the direction of a federal candidate for office,” which is believed to be Donald Trump. Prosecutors say that his arrangement of the hush money for Daniels and McDougal amount to an illegal campaign contribution.
On August 22, 2018, in an interview with Fox & Friends, Trump says he learned of the payments “later on” and says he made the payments.
“Just because Michael Cohen made a plea deal doesn’t mean that implicates the president in anything,” she adds, after Cohen implicated the president in his plea deal.
Did the president lie to the American people about the payments? “That’s a ridiculous accusation,” Sanders said. “The president in this matter has done nothing wrong and there are no charges against him.”
Sanders is asked if Trump would pardon Manafort and she dodges, saying his convictions have nothing to do with the president, the 2016 campaign or Russia collusion. Asked again, she does not rule out the possibility that Trump would pardon him.
Sanders calls the effort by Senate Democrats to delay the Kavanaugh hearings in wake of Cohen plea “a desperate and pathetic attempt by Democrats to obstruct” the nomination.
Asked if Trump feels betrayed by Cohen, his personal lawyer for more than a decade who once said he would “take a bullet” for him, Sanders said: “I don’t think the president is concerned at all. He knows that he did nothing wrong and there was no collusion.”
Sanders won’t engage with a question on the discrepancy between Trump saying he only learned about the payments to silence women who claim they had affairs with him “later on” and a recording released by Cohen’s legal team on which Trump can be heard discussing the payments.
“The president has done nothing wrong. There are no charges against him. There has been no collusion,” she said.
Sanders says she has said all she will say about the payments, refusing to answer a question about whether there are more payments made to silence women from speaking out about an alleged affair. She directs the reporter to outside counsel.
Sanders call impeachment chatter a “cheap publicity stunt” and attacks Democrats for leaning on the issue instead of putting forward a galvanizing message ahead of November. (Democrats really don’t want to talk about impeachment.)
“The idea of an impeachment is frankly a sad attempt by democrats and the only message they seem to have going into the midterms,” she said.
White House press briefing in wake of Cohen guilty plea and Manafort conviction
Sarah Huckabee Sanders is opening with an advisory for residents in the path of a storm in Hawaii.
She is also sending prayers to the family of Mollie Tibbetts, a 20-year-old Iowa student whose body was believed to be found on Tuesday after she vanished in July. A 24-year-old undocumented immigrant was charged the murder.
Here’s Trump’s response in full to a question about hush payments during the Fox & Friends interview.
Fox & Friends co-host Ainsley Earhardt: “Did you know about the payments?”
Trump: “Later on I knew. Later on. But you have to understand, Ainsley, what he did -- and they weren’t taken out of campaign finance, that’s the big thing. That’s a much bigger thing. Did they come out of the campaign? They didn’t come out of the campaign, they came from me. And I tweeted about it. You know, I put -- I don’t know if you know but I tweeted about the payments. But they didn’t come out of campaign. In fact, my first question when I heard about it was did they come out of the campaign because that could be a little dicey. And they didn’t come out of the campaign and that’s big. But they weren’t – that’s not a – it’s not even a campaign violation. If you look at President Obama, he had a massive campaign violation but he had a different attorney general and they viewed it a lot differently.”
Trump was also asked whether he believes the press is the “enemy of the people” as he has said.
Trump: “No, not at all but the fake news is and the fake news is comprised of -- it’s a lot -- it’s a big chunk, OK? Somebody said what’s the chunk. I said 80%. It’s a lot. It’s a lot. If I do something well, it’s not reported. Other than in the 20%. I mean, The New York Times cannot write a good story about me. They’re crazed. They’re like lunatics.”
Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs, who is on pool duty at the White House today, informs us that press briefing has been scheduled for 2:15pm EST. We’re standing by for Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
Trump has sat down for an interview with Fox & Friends co-host Ainsley Earhardt. In the teaser for the interview Trump says he knew about the payments Cohen made to silence the women from speaking publicly about affairs they said they had with him only “later on”.
“They weren’t taken out of campaign finance, that’s the big thing. that’s a much bigger thing. Did they come out of the campaign? They didn’t come from the campaign. They came from me,” Trump says in the interview when asked about the payments.
This directly contradicts what Cohen said in court on Tuesday. While pleading guilty to breaking campaign finance laws, Cohen alleged that he “worked in coordination with and at the direction of” then-candidate Trump to arrange payments to two women during the 2016 campaign.
Trump also suggests that Cohen’s guilty plea is somehow the fault of his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, who recused himself from the Russia investigation and has drawn the president’s ire ever since.
New York congressman Jerrold Nadler, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, is calling for immediate hearings on Trump’s “persistent, venomous attacks on the Department of Justice and the FBI”. He said Trump’s public comments in interviews and on social media are intended to undermine Mueller’s investigations.
“Yesterday’s felony convictions of President Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, and longtime personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, show this is no “WITCH HUNT” and make it even more unconscionable that Chairman [Bob] Goodlatte and the Republican Leadership are continuing to sit by and rehash old conspiracy theories instead of taking action. House Republicans may be willing to abet President Trump’s worst behavior, but I am not. ...
The Congress stands at a crossroads. Democrats are poised to take action to respond to this culture of corruption that has taken hold under Mr. Trump and Republican Congressional Majorities. It is not too late for my Republican colleagues to put our country ahead of their politics and join us in our work.
Schumer, the Democratic senate leader, called Cohen’s guilty plea a “game-changer” and demanded that the chamber “pause” consideration of Trump’s supreme court nominee. Schumer met with Kavanaugh on Tuesday and said their conversation took on a “new light” after yesterday’s news.
Judge Kavanaugh’s refusal to say that a president must comply with a duly issued subpoena, and Michael Cohen’s implication of the president in a federal crime – makes the danger of Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court abundantly clear. It’s a game changer. Should be.
A president, identified as an un-indicted co-conspirator of a federal crime – an accusation made not by a political enemy but by the closest of his own confidants – is on the verge of making a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court. A court that may someday soon determine the extent of the president’s legal jeopardy.
If you want to hear more from Cohen, there’s a fund for that.
Cohen’s lawyer, Lanny Davis, is “pleading for donations so that his client can continue to tell the truth about the investigation into President Trump,” the New York Post reports.
“Right now, Michael Cohen needs help from the American people to tell the truth, and we’ve set up a website,” Davis said this morning on NBC’s Today show.
“The Michael Cohen Truth Fund” was set up as a GoFundMe page on August 21. The goal is to raise $500,000.
By Wednesday morning, 1,217 people had donated $45,492.
Mitt Romney, who is the Republican Senate nominee for an open seat in Utah, has tip-toed into the fray with a Tweet that does not refer to Trump by name.
The former Republican presidential nominee has a complicated relationship with the president, who has denounced as a “phony” and a “fraud”. But Romney has cooled his criticism of Trump since launching his campaign for Senate, instead choosing to speak out in general terms without directly antagonizing the president.
The events of the last 24 hours confirm that conduct by highly-placed individuals was both dishonorable and illegal. Also confirmed is my faith in our justice system and my conviction that we are a nation committed to the rule of law.
Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s lawyer and the former mayor of New York, called Washington Post reporter Bob Costa this morning for a chat from a golf course in Scotland – unclear if it’s a Trump course – to chat about the latest developments.
Giuliani, calling Post from golf course in Scotland, says he has spoken with POTUS today and deliberated over what it all means—Manafort, Cohen, etc. Says, optimistically, they believe Mueller “might be at the end now. He has to be winding down. What else is there? Near the end.”
Giuliani adds that Trump legal team is looking into its options re Cohen tapes and whether they can release audio of some of his conversations with reporters about the payment since they believe they can use Cohen’s own words to counter his latest claims.
Wall Street is slightly sagging on Wednesday morning as the legal woes of two former Trump advisers threatened the president’s political standing.
According to a Reuters roundup of US stock markets:
Dow Jones Industrial Average dipped 2.77 points, or 0.01% at the open to 25,825.06
S&P 500 opened lower by 1.97 points, or 0.07%, at 2,860.99.
Nasdaq Composite dropped 15.13 points, or 0.19%, to 7,844.04 at the opening bell.
“Political pressure on Trump is increasing ... reducing the likelihood that he will have the political capital to continue driving fiscal stimulus in the U.S. economy. This suggests to many market participants that the era of U.S. outperformance is likely to end,” Karl Schamotta, director of FX strategy and structured products at Cambridge Global Payments in Toronto, told the agency.
House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi has told the Associated Press that impeaching is Trump is “not a priority” for Democrats despite the conviction of Trump’s former campaign manager and the guilty plea of his former lawyer.
Pelosi has for months urged her party to avoid raising the issue of impeachment, arguing that it was premature to go down that road before Mueller has finished his investigation. On Wednesday, Pelosi told the AP that “impeachment has to spring from something else”.
If and when the information emerges about that, we’ll see. It’s not a priority on the agenda going forward unless something else comes forward, Pelosi said.
Should Democrats win the House in November, Pelosi said she would prefer that they serve to conduct oversight and protect the special counsel’s investigation.
A bipartisan House majority has twice defeated attempts by Democrats to impeach the president. But the second vote attracted support from roughly a third of the Democratic caucus, an unexpectedly strong showing for the effort.
Meanwhile, Senate Democrats are steering clear of the I word: “impeachment”.
Instead, they’re hammering the case that the confirmation hearing of Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, should be postponed in light of Cohen’s guilty pleas and Manafort’s convictions.
Chuck Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader, is leading the charge, calling for a postponement of the hearing, which is set to begin on September 4.
Judge Kavanaugh’s refusal to say a POTUS must comply w a duly issued subpoena & Mr Cohen’s implication of POTUS in a federal crime make the danger of Kavanaugh's nomination to the SCOTUS abundantly clear.
It's a game changer & Chairman Grassley should delay confirmation hearings
And on Wednesday, senator Mazie Hirono, a Democrat from Hawaii, told reporters that she will cancel her meeting with Kavanaugh.
I have cancelled my meeting with Judge Kavanaugh. @realDonaldTrump, who is an unindicted co-conspirator in a criminal matter, does not deserve the courtesy of a meeting with his nominee—purposely selected to protect, as we say in Hawaii, his own okole.
