Democrat Senator Richard Blumenthal said in a Tuesday interview that the United States is currently facing a “Watergate moment” and “we need bipartisanship now more than ever to protect the special counsel.”
President Donald Trump’s former lawyer and “fixer” Michael Cohen appeared in federal court Tuesday, pleading guilty to a total of eight counts of tax and bank fraud, violations of campaign finance, as well as admitting to keeping information that would have harmed Trump in his presidential campaign in 2016.
“They could not accept Michael Cohen’s plea agreement unless they believe Michael Cohen,” Blumenthal told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on The Situation Room, “which means they have evidence to corroborate it.”
Blumenthal said the Senate Judiciary Committee needs to conduct its own investigation.
“We’re in a Watergate moment. We need bipartisanship now more than ever to protect the special counsel and to stop, and I must underscore stop, any consideration of pardons,” Blumenthal said.
Besides Cohen, the President’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort was also found guilty of eight counts of financial crimes on Tuesday.
“We’re likely to see a firestorm of resistance from the President of the United States,” Blumenthal said.
If Trump did pardon Manafort, “He would be screaming to the world, ‘I am guilty!’ And he would so undermine the credibility of his office that it would be a disaster for the nation,” Blumenthal said. “It would very possibly be an obstruction of justice because he would be misusing that power to protect himself as a target of that investigation.”
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