The Cohen-Manafort fallout

President Trump, in his first comments on Michael Cohen’s guilty plea, claimed payments to women shouldn’t be a campaign finance issue because “they didn’t come out of the campaign, they came from me.” 

He spoke with Fox and Friends today for an interview airing tomorrow.

Asked if he knew of the payments, he said:

Trump continued: “It’s not even a campaign violation.”

In a poke at Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Trump said, “If you look at President Obama, he had a massive campaign violation but he had a different attorney general and they viewed it a lot differently.”

What Trump is talking about: Cohen pleaded guilty yesterday to eight counts. The counts against Cohen included tax fraud, false statements to a bank and campaign finance violations tied to his work for Trump, including payments Cohen made or helped orchestrate that were designed to silence women who claimed affairs with the then-candidate.

Though not named in the plea deal filed in court, the women whom Cohen helped silence were two who have since gone public with their claims of sexual encounters or affairs with Trump: A porn star named Stephanie Clifford, who goes by the stage name Stormy Daniels, and a former Playboy model named Karen McDougal. Trump has denied the claims.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions defended the Justice Department and referenced the two bombshell developments in their prosecutions of Trump associates Michael Cohen and Paul Manafort at the end of an unrelated speech in Ohio Wednesday.

But, Sessions said, they are not the main focus of the Department of Justice.

He continued: “But this Department of Justice is focused on the priorities this President and the American people have given us.” He then listed issues like the opioid crisis, the MS-13 gang and “a crisis at our borders.”

“These are our priorities, these are what our people are working on every day,” Sessions said.

Rep. Elijah Cummings, the ranking member on the House Oversight Committee, is calling for Michael Cohen to testify before Congress in light of the guilty plea he entered yesterday.

He wrote a letter for Chairman Trey Gowdy asking for a hearing with Cohen.

“I have no doubt that you would convene immediate hearings on these matters if the occupant of the White House were a Democrat,” Cummings wrote. “I ask you to apply the same standard here.”

Here’s more from his letter:

Cummings would become the chairman of the oversight committee if the Democrats win control of the House during the midterm election.

You can read his full letter here.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, suggested that Americans would view any move by President Trump to pardon his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort as “interfering with an investigation.”

Graham continued: “I would, I would not recommend a pardon. I mean, you gotta earn a pardon. I think it would be seen as a bridge too far.”

On Tuesday, Manafort was found guilty of eight counts of financial crimes — five tax fraud charges, one charge of hiding foreign bank accounts and two counts of bank fraud. He faces a maximum of 80 years in prison.

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders will hold a press briefing at 2:15 p.m. ET.

This will be the first time reporters will be able to ask the White House questions following yesterday’s news.

What happened: Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen pleaded guilty Tuesday and implicated the President in a hush money scheme.

At virtually the same time, the President’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort was found guilty on eight counts of financial crimes.

Key Senate Democrats called on Republicans Wednesday to suspend the confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh after Michael Cohen – the President’s personal lawyer for decades– pleaded guilty to eight criminal counts in a New York court.

Here’s what they are saying:

Democrats began contemplating calls for delays last night in the hours after Cohen’s plea deal came down, a Democratic Senate aide said.

Then, this morning, Democrats met for a usually scheduled steering committee meeting where the discussion continued, and it became the consensus position, the aide said.

Watch more:

Mitch McConnell (l.) and John Cornyn in 2014.

Congressional Republicans are largely avoiding speculation that the guilty plea by President Donald Trump’s longtime personal lawyer Michael Cohen could potentially implicate the President in campaign finance violations.

Here’s a breakdown of what they’ve said:

House Speaker Paul Ryan: A spokesperson for Ryan said Tuesday night that the Wisconsin Republican was waiting for more information before weighing in. “We are aware of Mr. Cohen’s guilty plea to these serious charges. We will need more information than is currently available at this point,” the spokesperson said.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell: When asked by CNN about the Cohen news, McConnell declined to comment as he walked in a Capitol hallway Wednesday morning.

Sen. Orrin Hatch: The most senior Republican in the Senate, Hatch told reporters Wednesday morning that the news constituted “serious charges” but did not go as far as to call the President’s alleged involvement as high crimes or misdemeanors - the constitutional basis for impeachment.

“Well I’m not very happy about it,” he said of the hush money. “It should never have happened to begin with.” Hatch, however, went on to say the “President should not be held responsible for the actions of the people he’s trusted.”

Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley: The Chairman brushed off Cohen’s implication of the President as “speculation.”

“All we know about it is he’s plead guilty and everything else that you’re asking me about is speculation,” he told reporters. “And I don’t think I should be speculating.”

Sen. Bob Corker: The frequent Trump critic who is retiring at the end of his current term declined to weigh in on what legal jeopardy Cohen’s plea could put Trump in, saying he didn’t know enough and he wanted the legal system to play itself out. “I can’t imagine. I think anything the White House might do to interfere with Mueller at this point would end their presidency,” Corker said, referring to the separate investigation let by special counsel Robert Mueller on potential collusion between Russia and Trump’s campaign in the 2016 election.

Corker also said he wasn’t surprised by the revelations. “I can’t imagine people who are familiar with what’s been going on in the White House are particularly surprised. But I realize the actual statement of yesterday makes it real. Personally, I’m not particularly surprised by what happened.”

“I’ve been here 11.5 years, and I don’t think I’ve witnessed anything like I’ve witnessed in the last year and a half,” he continued. “Probably the American people haven’t in modern times.”

If you watched the news this morning – on any channel, we’ll forgive you if you momentarily clicked away from CNN – you surely saw him: A tan man in a tan suit, his sleepless eyes framed by sagging bags, his head topped with a sparse thatch of white and grey hair.

That’s Lanny Davis. And in this moment, he’s the President’s former personal attorney’s personal attorney.

Davis said Wednesday that he believes his client, Michael Cohen, is willing to testify before any congressional committee without being granted immunity. “Yes, I believe I can say that,” Davis told CNN’s John Berman on “New Day.” 

He also said Cohen wouldn’t ask Trump for a pardon. “His answer would be, ‘No, I do not want a pardon from this man.’”

But you may know him more for his work serving as President Bill Clinton’s very public legal defender against a series of allegations in the mid-1990s, most notably the fundraising issues (think “Lincoln bedroom”) surrounding the incumbent’s re-election effort.

Or perhaps you know him from his days defending the Washington Redskins – Davis was tasked with taking some of the heat away from calls for the team to change its name. He’s also represented Alex Rodriguez, Martha Stewart and Penn State University in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky sexual abuse scandal.

That’s Lanny Davis.

Davis’ willingness to defend – and advocate for – clients that, in the eyes of some, are indefensible, has turned him into a massive lightning rod, a man portrayed as willing to do or so anything for a buck.

Of his clients, Davis says in a statement on his website:

Read on: The many lives of Michael Cohen’s new lawyer

GOP surrogates and the Republican National Committee will likely get a lot of questions today about President Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen and his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

One talking point already making the rounds among Trump backers: if Cohen is an admitted felon — on the campaign finance charges along with a litany of other financial crimes — why should he be trusted in his claims about the President?

“I think Michael Cohen is someone who, like Paul Manafort, had an elaborate scheme to not pay their taxes and committed a lot of financial crimes,” said Matt Schlapp, a Trump ally and head of the American Conservative Union, on CNN’s “New Day.”

“In Cohen’s case, because they had him over a barrel, because they had all these crimes that they could prosecute him for, they got him to sign a plea that was not negotiated, it was take it or leave it, and he signed it to save his own hide and get a reduced sentence,” Schlapp said. “It happens in America all the time.”

Here’s what others are likely to say:

The plea deal of President Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen — and his implication of the President — was a major news story yesterday.

So what does that all mean for Congress?

On the Hill today, expect it to be a bit like Groundhog Day: Democrats warning in stark terms about what the President may do and the need to protect the Special Counsel, and Republicans dodging the issue entirely or making the point that Tuesday’s legal explosion had nothing to do with Russia.

One senior GOP aide acknowledged that given Cohen’s implication of the President on campaign finance violations, it wasn’t exactly a rock solid messaging, “but what else are we supposed to say at this point? It’s all just crazy.”

Bottom line: Tuesday wasn’t any kind of “tipping point” for Hill Republicans. Behind the scenes there’s definitely a level of “this is nuts,” but don’t expect that to be said publicly — or anyone to pursue any substantive response.