Michael Cohen leaves Federal court, Aug. 21, 2018, in New York.Mary Altaffer/The Canadian Press
The White House pushed back forcefully on Wednesday against suggestions that a plea deal struck by U.S. President Donald Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen implicated Mr. Trump in a crime.
“As the President has said, we’ve stated many times, he did nothing wrong. There are no charges against him,” press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said at a White House briefing. “Just because Michael Cohen made a plea deal doesn’t mean that that implicates the President on anything.”
Mr. Cohen on Tuesday pleaded guilty to eight criminal charges of tax evasion, bank fraud and campaign finance violations. He told a federal court in Manhattan that Mr. Trump directed him to arrange payments ahead of the 2016 presidential election to silence two women who said they had affairs with Mr. Trump.
Related: Former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen pleads guilty to paying hush money, implicates President
Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman, found guilty on eight of 18 charges
In the wake of Mr. Cohen’s plea, Senate Democrats on Wednesday demanded that forthcoming confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh be delayed, with some calling Mr. Trump a “co-conspirator.”
Earlier, the President lashed out at Mr. Cohen in a Twitter post by saying the campaign finance violations Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty to in federal court in New York were not a crime – even though prosecutors and Mr. Cohen agreed that they were. Mr. Trump made the claim without offering any evidence.
At the same time, Mr. Trump on Twitter praised former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who was convicted on Tuesday of multiple counts of fraud, as a “brave man” for not co-operating with federal authorities.
Fox News released excerpts of an interview conducted with Mr. Trump on Wednesday in which the President said he knew of the payments made by Mr. Cohen “later on,” but did not elaborate.
After first denying that he knew anything about Mr. Cohen’s actions, Mr. Trump earlier this year acknowledged he reimbursed Mr. Cohen for payments he made in late 2016 to Stormy Daniels, an adult-film actress whose real name is Stephanie Clifford. Ms. Daniels has alleged she had a relationship with Mr. Trump.
In July, CNN released an audio recording reportedly made by Mr. Cohen that features the lawyer and Mr. Trump in September, 2016, discussing whether to buy the rights to the story of Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model who also has alleged an affair with Mr. Trump.
The President has insisted he paid Mr. Cohen out of personal funds and that the payments were not intended to benefit his campaign but to resolve a personal matter.
“They weren’t taken out of campaign finance. That’s a big thing,” Mr. Trump said in the Fox interview. “They didn’t come out of the campaign; they came from me.”
Timing is questioned
Trump critics have argued the case being made by the President that the payments to Ms. Daniels and Ms. McDougal were personal do not hold up given the timing – only weeks before the election.
“If this was a personal matter, why wasn’t she paid off after the affair or in the intervening decade?” said Paul S. Ryan, the head of litigation at Common Cause. “The election was what made her story valuable.”
Mr. Cohen’s lawyer, Lanny Davis, said his client had information that would be of interest to special counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating whether the 2016 Trump campaign conspired with Russia to influence the election. Mr. Davis set up a website to collect donations for Mr. Cohen’s legal expenses.
Asked at the briefing if Mr. Trump was concerned about what Mr. Cohen might tell Mr. Mueller, Ms. Huckabee Sanders replied: “I don’t think the President is concerned at all. He knows that he did nothing wrong and that there was no collusion.”
New York investigators on Wednesday issued a subpoena to Mr. Cohen in connection with the state’s criminal investigation of the Trump Foundation, a state official said.
Mr. Trump has granted presidential pardons to conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza and former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, but Mr. Davis said his client would not accept one.
“Mr. Cohen is not interested in being dirtied by a pardon from such a man,” Mr. Davis told NPR.
Mr. Cohen’s plea came as Mr. Manafort was found guilty on eight charges in a separate financial fraud trial in Alexandria, Va., stemming from a federal investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election and possible coordination with the Trump campaign.
In a morning tweet, Mr. Trump said: “I feel very badly for Paul Manafort and his wonderful family. ‘Justice’ took a 12 year old tax case, among other things, applied tremendous pressure on him and, unlike Michael Cohen, he refused to ‘break’ – make up stories in order to get a ‘deal.’ ”
The Cohen and Manafort cases ratchet up political pressure on Mr. Trump and fellow Republicans ahead of November elections in which Democrats are seeking to take control of Congress.
The Mueller investigation, which has clouded Mr. Trump’s presidency for more than a year, and Tuesday’s developments also increase pressure on him personally. While Mr. Cohen did not name Mr. Trump in court on Tuesday, referring to him as “the candidate,” Mr. Davis on Wednesday accused the President of being directly involved.
Pressure from Democrats
Democratic Senate Leader Chuck Schumer, speaking on the Senate floor on Wednesday, insisted the confirmation hearing scheduled for Mr. Kavanaugh in early September be pushed back. Other Senate Democrats said they were cancelling their meetings with Mr. Kavanaugh and considered his nomination tainted.
Mr. Schumer said he was concerned that Mr. Kavanaugh, a federal appeals judge, told him on Tuesday that presidents should not be subject to criminal or civil investigations – or even be required to comply with related subpoenas – while in office and that impeachment by Congress is the only legal recourse.
On the Senate floor, Mr. Schumer argued that Mr. Trump should not be permitted to select a Supreme Court justice who could ultimately end up hearing a case involving the President.
“A president identified as a co-conspirator of a federal crime, an accusation not made 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,” Mr. Schumer said.
Congressional Republicans still were taking measure of the situation, with Senator John Cornyn, the second-ranking Republican in the Senate, saying Mr. Cohen’s “credibility is in tatters because he’s basically been all over the map in terms of what his story is.”
Mr. Cornyn said Congress would continue investigating claims of Russian interference in the 2016 election but noted that “nothing we heard yesterday has anything to do with Russia, or the reason why director Mueller was appointed special counsel.”
Russia has denied U.S. intelligence community findings that it interfered with the 2016 election with the aim of boosting Mr. Trump and hampering Democratic challenger Hillary Clinton. Mr. Trump has denied any collusion by his campaign with Moscow and repeatedly called Mr. Mueller’s investigation a witch hunt.