The conviction of Paul Manafort and the admission of guilt by Michael Cohen, both of whom once belonged to president Donald Trump's inner circle of advisers and who became felons two days ago, has increased the chances Trump might be impeached in 2019.
That chance will receive a big boost if the Democratic Party, as projected, seizes control of the U.S. House of Representatives in the mid-term election in November. Trump's impeachment becomes a certainty if Democrats also win the Senate, which seems more unlikely as polls suggest.
Impeachment needs a simple majority vote in the House, which the Republicans currently control by a margin of 23 seats. A Senate trial will need two-thirds of the senators voting to convict Trump.
The twin legal and political disasters for Trump the other day dramatically increased the odds Trump won't see out his full term as president, according to political experts. One expert argued the legal defeats suffered by Manafort and Cohen "significantly" raised the odds of Trump's impeachment, indictment or resignation from office. Another said the chance of any of these three coming to pass is "very high."
"The odds of Trump either being impeached or somehow not finishing his term went up significantly yesterday," said Brian Klaas, a former U.S. campaign adviser. He said Trump suffered both legal and political damage from Tuesday's legal dramas.
There is now also a "real risk" Cohen will cooperate with Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who has been investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election with the assistance of the Trump campaign. Cohen is known to have voluminous documentation of the "fixes" he did on Trump's behalf for the past 12 years, as well as incriminating voice recordings of his conversations with Trump.
Klass observed a growing consensus, especially among Democrats and independents, and probably among Trump's core base, as well, that Trump deliberately surrounded himself with criminals. And it's a fact that many people in Trump's inner circle have either been convicted of or have pleaded guilty to crimes, he said.
The conviction of Manafort in a jury trial also demolished Trump's oft-repeated claim the Mueller investigation is a witch hunt or fake news.
Legal experts said the likelihood Trump will leave office is almost assured if Mueller decides he has enough evidence to indict and bring Trump to trial. The legal community, however, is divided on whether it's constitutional for a sitting president to be indicted for his crimes. It's not certain the Supreme Court where Republican-appointed judges hold a majority will agree to it.
Manafort, the former campaign chairman of Trump's presidential campaign who had links to Russia and Vladimir Putin, was found guilty on Aug. 21 on eight counts of financial crimes in a Washington, DC, federal court.
A jury found Manafort guilty of five tax fraud charges; two counts of bank fraud and one charge of hiding foreign bank accounts. He was charged with 18 counts of tax evasion and hiding foreign bank accounts, among others.
Cohen, the keeper of some of Trump's darkest secrets, directly implicated his former client in criminal activity by pleading guilty to eight criminal counts in a Manhattan federal court.
Cohen admitted that in coordination and at the direction of Trump (who was named in the charge sheet as a candidate for federal office), he kept information that would have been harmful to Trump and his campaign from being made public during the 2016 presidential election.
