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https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/21/paul...t-verdict.html

President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort on Tuesday was found guilty of eight criminal counts, including five counts of tax fraud.

In a note to U.S. District Court Judge T.S. Ellis, the jurors said they had not reached a consensus on the 10 remaining counts in the bank fraud and tax crimes trial.

Manafort, 69, faces another federal trial next month in Washington, D.C., which also stems from special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 campaign.

Mueller's prosecutors called 27 witnesses to testify against Manafort, and submitted more than 350 exhibits.

Manafort's defense team, in contrast, called no witnesses at the trial in Alexandria, Virginia, and introduced just 12 exhibits into evidence.

Among the prosecution's witnesses was Manafort's former business associate, Rick Gates, who also had worked on the presidential campaign of Donald Trump in 2016.

Gates pleaded guilty earlier this year to conspiracy and making false statements. He has not yet been sentenced.

The charges against Manafort and Gates were connected to their consulting work in Ukraine, and not to their work on the Trump campaign.

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Michael Cohen, the former personal lawyer and fixer for President Donald Trump, agreed to plead guilty on Tuesday to eight counts related to tax fraud, excessive campaign contributions, making false statements to a financial institution, and unlawful corporate contributions at a court hearing in New York on Tuesday.

Two of those counts appear to relate to Trump directly. Cohen admitted on Tuesday to making payments to two women at the direction of an unidentified candidate for political office. Those payments, Cohen said, were made to influence the outcome of the election.

"I used a company under my control to pay $130,000 to a person to keep information from becoming public," Cohen told the judge of one of the payments.

Cohen said that he was later paid back by the candidate. When the judge asked Cohen whether he knew what he was doing was illegal, he said "yes," according to NBC News.

That payment is thought to refer to the $130,000 hush money payment Cohen facilitated to porn star Stormy Daniels, who has said that she had sex with the president. Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, is now suing Cohen and Trump to void a nondisclosure agreement regarding the payment.

Cohen could face more than five years in prison, according to his plea agreement.

News of Cohen's plea deal comes as the president's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort was found guilty on eight criminal counts by a jury in Virginia. Manafort's trial was the first to come as a result of special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CNBC.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/21/trum...-nbc-news.html

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This is HUGE news