{"id":374745,"date":"2018-08-24T19:38:14","date_gmt":"2018-08-24T18:38:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/wasting-time-with-manafort-cohen-and-russiagate\/"},"modified":"2018-08-24T19:38:14","modified_gmt":"2018-08-24T18:38:14","slug":"wasting-time-with-manafort-cohen-and-russiagate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/wasting-time-with-manafort-cohen-and-russiagate\/","title":{"rendered":"Wasting Time with Manafort, Cohen, and Russiagate"},"content":{"rendered":"<div itemprop=\"articleBody\">\n<div id=\"attachment_104774\" style=\"width: 520px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-104774\" src=\"https:\/\/uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com\/wp-content\/dropzone\/2018\/08\/Paul_Manafort_at_2016_RNC.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"510\" height=\"382\" srcset=\"https:\/\/uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com\/wp-content\/dropzone\/2018\/08\/Paul_Manafort_at_2016_RNC.jpg 510w, https:\/\/uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com\/wp-content\/dropzone\/2018\/08\/Paul_Manafort_at_2016_RNC-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com\/wp-content\/dropzone\/2018\/08\/Paul_Manafort_at_2016_RNC-768x575.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 510px) 100vw, 510px\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photograph Source Voice of America | <a href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/2.0\/\">CC BY 2.0<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>So, Paul Manafort, described by the New York Times as \u201ca longtime lobbyist and political consultant who worked for multiple Republican candidates and presidents,\u201d was convicted of bank fraud, tax fraud and failure to report a foreign bank account. And Michael Cohen, Donald Trump\u2019s former personal lawyer, pled guilty to tax evasion, bank fraud (making false statements to obtain loans), and breaking campaign finance laws by paying off two women who claimed to have had sexual affairs with Trump. Because Cohen says those payoffs were made at Trump\u2019s direction, that is the one charge that directly implicates Trump.<\/p>\n<p>On the basis of the these results, the NYT editorial board <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/08\/21\/opinion\/manafort-cohen-guilty.html\">insists<\/a>: \u201cOnly a complete fantasist \u2026 could continue to claim that this investigation of foreign subversion of an American election, which has already yielded dozens of other indictments and several guilty pleas, is a \u2018hoax\u2019 or \u2018scam\u2019 or \u2018rigged witch hunt.\u2019\u201d Democrats concur, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/08\/21\/us\/politics\/trump-manafort-cohen-mueller.html\">saying<\/a> the results \u201cput the lie to Mr. Trump\u2019s argument that Mr. Mueller was engaged in a political investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But these crimes are tax fraud, money laundering, and credit app padding that have nothing to do with Donald Trump, and campaign-finance violations related to what a critic of Trump aptly <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/08\/21\/us\/politics\/trump-manafort-cohen-mueller.html\">describes<\/a> as \u201ca classic B-team type of bumbling screw-up of covering up mistresses.\u201d I question the level of word play, if not fantasizing, necessary to&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2018\/08\/24\/be-careful-what-you-ask-for-wasting-time-with-manafort-cohen-and-russiagate\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Photograph Source Voice of America | CC BY 2.0 So, Paul Manafort, described by the New York Times as \u201ca longtime lobbyist and political consultant who worked for multiple Republican candidates and presidents,\u201d was convicted of bank fraud, tax fraud and failure to report a foreign bank account. And Michael Cohen, Donald Trump\u2019s former personal [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-374745","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=374745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374745\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=374745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=374745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=374745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}