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The President in a ViseEditorial of The New York Sun | August 21, 2018From President Trump’s point of view, it will be hard to put the gloss on the developments today in federal criminal court. First came news that the president’s erstwhile personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, would be pleading guilty, albeit without an obligation to turn state’s evidence. Then came news of a jury’s conviction of Mr. Trump’s erstwhile campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, on eight counts, albeit crimes unrelated to the president. The crimes of both are felonies.Yet if we were the judge — a stretch to be sure — we would reject the guilty plea in the one matter that intimately threatens Mr. Trump’s presidency. That is Michael Cohen’s claim that his role in arranging to pay so-called hush money to Stormy Daniels and another woman amounts to a violation of campaign finance law. That, at least to us, is by no means clear. If the law bars such payments, it’s probably unconstitutional. Americans deserve to have it tried in court.Particularly because Cohen’s plea puts the President in a terrible box. Cohen, after all, is pleading in court that it was at Mr. Trump’s direction that he paid for the settlements with the two women who say they had affairs with Mr. Trump and won financial settlements from him. Yet by cutting a deal with the prosecutors, Cohen a) stipulates that what he did was against the law and b) denies his ex-client the chance to contest his allegations in an adversarial proceeding.Read more at: https://www.nysun.com/editorials/the-president-in-a-vice/90360/
