Tuesday was quite day for the Trump administration and the Republican party. Trump’s personal lawyer and “fixer” Michael Cohen plead guilty in a New York federal court to eight criminal counts and implicated Donald Trump in a plea deal with prosecutors of the Southern District of New York.
The counts against Cohen included tax fraud, false statements to a bank and campaign finance violations tied to his work for Trump, including payments Cohen made or helped orchestrate that were designed to silence women who claimed affairs with the then-candidate.
Almost simultaneously with that news, the jury in the federal trial of Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort was found guilty of eight criminal counts of bank fraud and tax evasion. A mistrial was declared on the other 10 counts the jury was unable to decide.
Manafort, a fixture in Republican politics for decades, was convicted of five counts of tax fraud, one count of failure to file a report of foreign bank and financial accounts and two counts of bank fraud. A mistrial was declared in three counts of failing to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts, and seven counts of bank fraud and bank fraud conspiracy.
Prosecutors built a case that Manafort for years hid millions from U.S. tax authorities in overseas accounts, spending the money to maintain a lavish lifestyle and lying to banks to generate more cash.
Buried all the media hubbub on these two major stories. prosecutors in California announced that Republican Representative Duncan Hunter and his wife were indicted on misuse of campaign funds.
The San Diego County couple used the cash to take trips to Italy, Hawaii, London and elsewhere, and even used the funds to cover school tuition, dental work and theater tickets, the federal grand jury in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California said in an indictment unsealed Tuesday.
Hunter, a Republican and the son of a retired congressman who also represented a section of San Diego County, was an early and staunch supporter of President Donald Trump. He is the second Republican politician to be indicted this month. Rep. Chris Collins (R-NY) was indicted for insider trading in the Southern District of NY. He withdrew in bid for reelection a few days later.
It was a really bad days for Republicans, especially Donald Trump.