The following article by Griffin Connolly was posted on the Roll Call website August 22, 2018:
President’s former top aides found or pleaded guilty on eight federal charges apiece Tuesday
Democratic senators issued a warning to President Donald Trump about exercising his pardoning powers on two of his top former aides, 2016 campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his longtime attorney Michael Cohen: You don’t want to go there.
Cohen pleaded guilty to eight counts of campaign finance, bank fraud and tax fraud and directly implicated the president for directing him to commit a crime in a New York courtroom Tuesday.
Within minutes, roughly 200 miles south at a federal courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia, Manafort was found guilty on eight charges of tax evasion and bank fraud after a three-week jury trial.