Read some more. Slate "What the Craziest News Day of the Year Means for Trump"

[NRaleighLiberal]

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/08/cohen-and-manafort-news-what-does-it-mean-for-donald-trump.html

conversation with Jeffrey Toobin - By ISAAC CHOTINER

AUG 21, 201811:08 PM

On Tuesday, in what turned out to be one of the blockbuster news days of the year—which is saying something—the president’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, was convicted on eight counts of fraud in a case brought by Robert Mueller’s investigators. Meanwhile—or, actually, simultaneously—the president’s infamous onetime fixer, Michael Cohen, pleaded guilty to tax evasion and bank fraud, and, even more momentously, claimed that Donald Trump directed him to make illegal payments to two women during the campaign. This was apparently done in order to keep them quiet about affairs they say they had with the president.

To talk about what this means for the Trump presidency and the ongoing Mueller investigation, I spoke by phone with Jeffrey Toobin, a staff writer at the New Yorker and CNN’s chief legal analyst. During the course of our conversation, which has been edited and condensed for clarity, we discussed whether pardoning Manafort would cause legal trouble for Trump, why Democrats taking the House could lead to more Cohen revelations, and the real importance of Tuesday’s momentous few hours of news.

Isaac Chotiner: After the Manafort and Cohen news broke, you tweeted, “It may be that the Trump presidency will be divided into pre- and post-August 21, 2018 periods.” What do you think really might have changed today?

Jeffrey Toobin: There is one specific and one general thing that have changed. The specific thing is that you have the president directly and explicitly accused of criminal conduct, which is very substantially different from where we have been before. There remain complex legal questions about what kind of collusion is unlawful, and whether a president can obstruct justice by firing the director of the FBI. Those are complicated and interesting questions. But it is beyond doubt that a candidate for president can violate campaign finance law. That’s not a complicated legal question. Now, obviously, the Trump forces will say that Michael Cohen is just a liar, and he may be. But the direct implication of the president of the United States in criminal behavior is very different.

The general thing is that here you have on the same day, within an hour of one another, the chairman of the president’s campaign, and his personal attorney and close associate, both convicted of or pleading guilty to serious felonies. That in-and-of itself is a profound thing and something you can’t say about virtually any president, except maybe Richard Nixon. Just the overall stench of those double-barreled developments is a serious thing.


snip- a long read and a good one

[Stuart G]

1. TV show called, "Down It Goes"..This show..."Down Trump Goes..and Goes and Goes..nt

[underpants]

2. Very good