Michael D. Cohen, President Trump’s former fixer, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to breaking campaign finance laws and other charges. He made the extraordinary admission that he arranged payments to two women “at the direction of the candidate,” referring to Mr. Trump, to secure their silence about affairs they said they had with Mr. Trump. Mr. Cohen told a judge in United States District Court in Manhattan that the payments were “for the principal purpose of influencing the election” for president in 2016. The plea came shortly before another blow to the president: his former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, was convicted in his financial fraud trial in Virginia. The special counsel had built a case that Mr. Manafort hid millions of dollars in foreign accounts to evade taxes and lied to banks to obtain $20 million in loans.

Source: New York Times August 21, 2018 18:19 UTC