Trump facing 'real risk' of impeachment or criminal charges after Cohen and Manafort cases, experts say

The chances that Donald Trump will not see out his full term as president increased dramatically yesterday with two former advisers facing lengthy spells in prison, analysts said.

The conviction of the president’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, and the plea deal entered by his ex-lawyer, Michael Cohen, “significantly” raised the odds of impeachment, indictment or Mr Trump resigning from office, political experts said.

The setbacks refocused attention on Robert Mueller's inquiry into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, with the likelihood that Cohen will now cooperate with the investigation said to be “very high”.

Brian Klaas, a former US campaign adviser, said Mr Trump suffered both legal and political damage from Tuesday’s courtroom drama and there was now a "real risk" that Cohen would cooperate with the Mueller probe.

“The odds of Trump either being impeached or somehow not finishing his term went up significantly yesterday,” he told The Independent.

“There is a growing consensus among at least Democrats and independents, if not Mr Trump's core base, that he is surrounding himself by criminals.

“There are a lot of people in Mr Trump’s inner circle who are either convicted of or pleading guilty to crimes.”

He said the conviction of Manafort by a jury rather than the FBI or a judge “undercuts his claims that this is a witch-hunt or that it is fake news”.

Mr Trump has proved adept at shaking off criticism and outrunning controversy, but David Weinstein, a former federal prosecutor who is not involved in the case, said it would now be "hard for the president to try to discredit all this. It's circling him”.

The path to impeachment requires a simple majority vote in the House of Representatives, which the Republicans currently control by a margin of 23 seats, and a senate trial in which two-thirds would need to vote to convict Mr Trump.

Analysts said the political fallout from the Manafort and Cohen cases would also increase the chances of the Democrats taking control of the House in November.

Manafort was convicted of financial crimes at nearly the same moment Cohen pleaded guilty to a series of crimes including campaign finance violations that the lawyer said he carried out in coordination with Mr Trump.

Rodell Mollineau, a senior Democratic strategist, said the news "adds to a constant drumbeat that will ultimately affect some independent voters" and help Democrats at the polls.

Asked about the chances of impeachment, Dr Klaas said it was “still a very high hurdle to clear, but it could happen if the Republican calculation is that sticking with Trump is more damaging than abandoning him”.

He also raised the prospect of the president being indicted while in office.

“There is a divide among constitutional legal scholars as to whether it is constitutional or not to indict a sitting president,” Dr Klaas, of the London School of Economics, said, adding that it remained a possibility.

“There is one outcome in which Mr Mueller decides he has enough evidence to try and indict President Trump, but we don’t know how likely that is, we don’t know if it is possible, we don’t know if the Supreme Court would agree to it.

“The fact that president has handpicked the latest supreme court judge potentially creates the risk of a conflict of interest in a very, very important court case that could arise in the future against the president.”

Of the two latest developments, Cohen's plea deal is said to be more troublesome for the president.

The president’s former “fixer” testified that Mr Trump directed him to commit a crime by arranging payments ahead of the 2016 election to silence two women who said they had had affairs with the New York billionaire businessman.

Mr Trump stayed silent on the Cohen case when questioned by reporters on Tuesday evening, but Dr Klaas said there was a “very high” likelihood the president’s former personal lawyer would now “cooperate in some form with federal prosecutors against Mr Trump”.

Cohen's lawyer, Lanny Davis on Tuesday indicated that Cohen had information of interest to the Mueller inquiry. “I do believe that he has information about Mr Trump that would be of interest both in Washington as well as New York state.

“I know that he wants to tell the truth about Mr Trump and when he first came to me we had long conversations about his views, about the suitability of Mr Trump to be president of the United States, and I believe that Michael Cohen is motivated for his country as well as concern about his family.

“And he will tell the truth.”

“Cohen could die in jail so there is a real risk for him that this is not just something that will go away and it will tempt him to testify against the president,” Dr Klaas said.

Cohen’s own lawyer has said his client would refuse a pardon from Mr Trump, but any attempt to do so would herald a “constitutional crisis”, Dr Klaas added, “because it will be so damaging to have a situation in which the president was either using pardons to avoid his own criminal liability or potentially to pardon himself, which is something that he has dangled in the past.”