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As former Trump attorney Michael Cohen pled guilty to eight charges levied against him including silencing two women that Trump had affairs with (implicating Trump in the deed in violation of campaign finance rules) in a federal courthouse in Manhattan, nearly simultaneous a jury in Washington, DC announced its verdicts for Paul Manafort, finding the former campaign chairman guilty on eight of eighteen counts.
Declaring mistrial on some of the accusations—those he was found guilty for include tax evasion, obtaining lines of credit on false pretences and bank fraud—speaks to the fairness of the court proceedings and impartiality of the jurors. Next on the docket for Manafort, he will stand trial next month for failure to declare himself as acting on behalf of a foreign agent when he lobbied for Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, ousted by the Orange Revolution of 2014 and wanted in the country for crimes of high treason, malversation and murder. While the later had less to do with Trump than the former, the outcome does confer more protections on the Special Council’s investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia against interference on the part of Republicans who would like to see the matter closed by demonstrating conspiracy and the charges materialised and were substantiated directly as a result of the Special Council’s work.