If you had a feeling that today’s convictions of Donald Trump’s personal attorney and campaign chairman were missing a certain something, this probably wasn’t it. But it’s still hilarious.
During his statement before a federal judge, Trump attorney Michael Cohen not only admitted that he broke federal campaign finance laws, but that he did so “at the direction of a candidate for federal office.” It’s a statement that immediately flips Trump into the unindicted co-conspirator category that Nixon only achieved during his final days in office.
But Trump’s other personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, says nuh uh.
Giuliani: There is no allegation of any wrongdoing against the President in the government's charges against Mr. Cohen. It is clear that, as the prosecutor noted, Mr. Cohen's actions reflect a pattern of lies and dishonesty over a significant period of time.
That’s only true if the “individual-1” mentioned repeatedly in the charges against Cohen—as in, a conspiracy to capture “negative stories about individual-1’s relationships with women”—is not Trump. Because, quite clearly in the charges against Cohen, that effort is considered part of Cohen’s work in “assisting the campaign” of individual-1.
But if individual-1 is Donald Trump (and it is), then both the charges against Cohen and his statement in court irrevocably entangle Trump in a conspiracy to commit fraud for the purposes of affecting the outcome of the election.
The only sad thing about this is that, after the earlier events of today, Giuliani couldn’t find a way to leak something still more outrageous than what the public already learned in court. But he’ll keep trying.