Donald Trump, the 45th President of the United States, might be in legal trouble after Michael Cohen, his former longtime personal lawyer, testified against him in court on August 21.
After pleading guilty to eight charges, including tax and bank fraud, Cohen struck a plea deal with prosecutors to reduce his prison time from a whopping 65 years down to approximately 5 years.
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Cohen then testified against his client, claiming that he violated campaign finance laws at Trump’s behest, and that the latter was fully aware that he was breaking the law.
Cohen was tried after it was revealed that he had paid hush money to Donald Trump’s “mistresses”, pornographic star Stormy Daniels, and Playboy model Karen McDonald, shortly before the infamous 2016 Presidential Elections. Although Cohen made every attempt to deny the allegations, he soon changed his tune and surrendered to the FBI.
On the same day, Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort was convicted on 10 counts of tax and bank fraud by a Virginia jury. Manafort was the first Trump associate to be be tried by a Federal Court, a fallout of the ongoing Special Counsel’s investigation into Russian meddling into the US elections.
Trump is now in hot water, and is facing immense backlash from the news media, his citizens, as well as the Democrats. Many are calling for his impeachment and indictment. Political pundits also expect that these revelations will adversely impact Republican candidates running in the 2018 Midterm elections.
At a rally in West Virginia the same day, Trump commented on the matter, saying “It’s a very sad thing that happened, it had nothing to do with Russian collusion”.