“The Worst Hour of His Entire Life”: Cohen, Manafort, and the Twin Courtroom Dramas That Changed Trump’s Presidency

#TIA – For the first time since his election, there appeared to be a possibility that Trump might actually lose office when these two verdicts came in. But as my mother’s saying goes, deader snakes than that have crawled

“Just before 5 P.M. on Tuesday, the afternoon of August 21, 2018, became one of those unforgettable Trump news cycles, like the moment when the “Access Hollywood” tape was released, on October 7, 2016, and Donald Trump’s voice was heard bragging about sexually forcing himself on women, or when the White House suddenly announced, on May 9, 2017, that Trump had fired the F.B.I. director, James Comey, instantly conjuring the comparisons to Richard Nixon and Watergate that have shadowed him ever since. Tuesday’s breathtaking news unfolded in the course of a single hour in two separate federal courtrooms—one in New York City, the other in Alexandria, Virginia—where, at virtually the same time, Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to eight federal counts and Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, was found guilty on eight federal counts brought by the special counsel, Robert Mueller. As all this played out, I happened to be interviewing one of Trump’s main legal nemeses, President Obama’s former White House ethics czar, Norm Eisen.”

Read more at The New Yorker