All the President’s Men: Some of the “best people” President Trump has surrounded himself with this morning are convicted felons. One of them might have devastating information about the President.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller won his first jury conviction against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort while Trump’s former personal lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen pled guilty to tax evasion, bank fraud, and violating campaign finance laws.

While the Manafort prosecution came out of the Russia investigation, most damaging to President Trump is the Cohen plea in which he admitted making illegal payments to silence two women who had affairs with Trump, “in coordination with and at the direction of a candidate for federal office.” Without naming Donald Trump, what he said was that he helped the current president to commit crimes to influence the outcome of the 2016 election.

Cohen’s plea agreement with prosecutors does not require him to cooperate with investigators but he is likely to do so in an effort to minimize his time in jail. His lawyer, Lanny Davis, said Cohen has evidence of Trump’s knowledge about a “criminal conspiracy” to hack into the emails of Democratic officials during the 2016 election.

Court filings show that Cohen was willing to do anything for Trump. He used a line of credit obtained through a fraudulent loan application to pay off porn actress Stormy Daniels.

After the election, someone at the Trump organization ordered that Cohen be paid $420,000, which would reimburse him the $280,000 paid to two women, along with money for taxes, expenses, and a $60,000 bonus.

The Cohen plea came shortly after Manafort was found guilty of eight counts of avoiding taxes and committing bank fraud. The jury was unable to reach a unanimous verdict on 10 other counts.

Manafort still faces two other criminal trials. While there’s been speculation that he’s waiting for a presidential pardon, he too might choose to cooperate to lighten his sentence.

The Mueller investigation now has six guilty pleas and one conviction.

Travelling last night for a political rally in Charleston, WV, President Trump didn’t mention Cohen and described Manafort as a “good man” swept up in the “witch hunt” of the Russia investigation. He’s defending a liar and a tax cheat as “a good man.” He said, “This has nothing do with Russian collusion.”

At the Charleston rally, Trump spoke about immigration, midterm elections, the Russia investigation, and fake news, but he never mentioned Cohen and Manafort.

Sad Ending: Investigators have found a body and charged an illegal immigrant with murder in the disappearance of 20-year-old Mollie Tibbets, an Iowa college sophomore last seen jogging in mid-July. The search became a national story.

Police say Cristhian Rivera, 24, a Mexican national in the country illegally, admitted that he abducted and killed Tibbets in her hometown of Brooklyn, Iowa. They say he led investigators to her body where he had hidden it under stalks in a corn field.

Her Too: Italian actress Asia Argento, one of the first accusers of movie producer Harvey Weinstein, has finally denied an accusation that she sexually molested a 17-year-old actor when she was 37.

The original story was broken nearly a week ago by the NY Times.

Argento, who was romantically involved with the late celebrity chef Antony Bourdain, said that actor Jimmy Bennett came to her desperate for money and Bourdain chose to settle it quietly. She said, “Anthony personally undertook to help Bennett economically, upon the condition that we would no longer suffer any further intrusions in our life.”

Weinstein’s lawyer said, “One of your principal accusers is being outed as a liar and a fraud, so most people would be relieved when that happens.”

Unfriended: Facebook says it has identified and removed 652 pages, accounts, and groups that originated in Iran and Russia that were designed to sow misinformation and political discord in the US.

“We believe these pages, groups and accounts were part of two sets of campaigns,” Facebook CEO mark Zuckerberg said in a conference call. “One from Iran, with ties to state owned media. The other came from a set of people the U.S. government and others have linked to Russia.”

Hand in the Till:California Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter and his wife have been indicted on charges of using campaign money for personal and family expenses.Hunter was an early supporter of President Trump. The Hunters are accused of using $250,000 to pay for groceries, dental bills, theater tickets, and family trips.

Hunter was once listed as one of the 10 poorest members of Congress. Finances, not performance.

-30-