36 TIME September 3–10, 2018
When that didn’t come to pass, he told
friends he might be White House chief of
staf. That didn’t happen either, but still
he swore he’d “take a bullet” for Trump.
In the end, the President’s longtime
personal lawyer stood before a federal
judge in a New York City courthouse
on Aug. 21 and swore to something else
entirely: that he had engaged in a crime
coordinated by the man who now sits in
the Oval Oice.
Even in a presidency punctuated
by surreal moments, it was a stunning
scene. Cohen pleaded guilty to eight
felony counts, including arranging pay-
ments during the 2016 campaign to
suppress two women’s accounts of al-
leged extramarital afairs with Trump.
“I participated in this conduct,” Cohen
avowed, “in coordination with and at
the direction of ” Trump himself. With
that extraordinary statement, he im-
plicated the President of the United
States in a federal crime—to be violat-
ing campaign-inance laws—“principal
purpose,” of which he said, was to inlu-
ence an election that Trump won by only
78,000 votes in three states.
The courtroom drama brought
all the President’s legal and political
problems together in a single supernova.
It highlighted Trump’s sordid history
with women, his willingness to blur the
lines between business and politics, and
growing fallout from the investigation
led by special counsel Robert Mueller,
who referred the Cohen case to federal
prosecutors. Worse, the explosion
came minutes after Trump’s onetime
campaign chairman Paul Manafort was
convicted on eight counts of tax evasion
and bank fraud in a case prosecuted
by Mueller’s deputies. And it followed
revelations that White House counsel
Don McGahn has cooperated extensively
with Mueller’s probe, sitting for more
than 30 hours of detailed and candid
interviews.
It was arguably the most pivotal day
in this presidency, and the consequences
are only beginning to kick in. Cohen’s
plea raised questions that cut to the
heart of Trump’s legitimacy. If Trump
was willing to deploy his vast fortune
to quash salacious stories, as Cohen al-
leges, what else might he have used his
wealth for? What other damaging in-
formation could the President’s former
ixer share? And what scrutiny awaits
Trump’s business empire, which the
President has sought to shield from the
widening probes?
For now, Trump may not pay a
political or legal price. He has beneited
from an unshakable bond with his base:
even as criminal investigations seep
further into his inner circle, Trump
has averaged an 87% approval rating
from Republicans so far in his second
year, according to Gallup. And manylegal experts believe that as President
he cannot be indicted for a crime while
in oice. “He did nothing wrong,”
said White House spokesperson Sarah
Huckabee Sanders on Aug. 22. “There
are no charges against him in this. And
just because Michael Cohen has made a
deal doesn’t mean that that implicates
the President on anything.”
There was no question, however,
that the late-August events mark a
new and dangerous phase for Trump.Nation
Michael Cohen
once believed
he would lead
Donald Trump’s
presidential
campaign.
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