On August 21, the 51-year-old former private lawyer to US President Donald Trump, Michael Cohen, testified at a Manhattan Federal Court that Trump had instructed him to pay hush money to women with whom Trump had affairs in order to keep their mouths shut before the 2016 presidential campaign, while Cohen also admitted his own guilt.

Why did Michael Cohen make this admission at this moment?

A few days ago, about 350 traditional media outlets in the US turned against Trump for he has charged that they are a public enemy of the American people. At about the same time, about 75 former CIA officers and agents joined them to confront Trump after he threatened to suspend some of their rights to security access.

So the Cohen guilty plea will certainly produce more pressure on Trump regarding suspicions of wrongdoing during the presidential campaign. All of the above will definitely affect the results of the US midterm elections on November 6. As Trump’s former private lawyer, Cohen continued to serve the president even after he took office, so they should have been on good terms. But why did Cohen betray his client who is the president of the US? 

 As a matter of fact, the relations between them went sour after the FBI searched Cohen’s office in April and seized what was believed to be some valuable information related to Trump’s special relationship with Russia. 

Cohen should know more specific details of Trump family business, particularly its finances, and the widespread criticism from the media and the president's opponents embolden him to stand up, particularly as several of the team members of Trump’s campaign have been in trouble so far.

Cohen needs to cut off relations with Trump.

The voices calling for the impeachment of Trump have never disappeared and there is every reason for the Congress to pursue this. Is it possible to start the process for impeachment? It is still too early to tell whether this will happen, though what has happened is definitely good news for the Democratic Party.

However, if the Democrats try to impeach him, then the sympathy they have earned from the voters will probably disappear. So the best way is to wait for the Republican Party to oppose Trump in order not to sink together with his radical policies.

The precondition to start an impeachment requires a presidential violation of federal law such as in Nixon’s Watergate Scandal, or a threat to impeach, as in the case of Clinton’s sex scandal.

In Trump’s case, the payments were illegal campaign contributions that exceeded the applicable limit and needed to be reported. In addition, if Trump knew the payments were campaign-related and directed them as Cohen charges, then Trump certainly violated campaign finance law, which will provide Mueller’s report titled “Conspiracy to Violate Campaign Finance Laws” more bullets – whether Trump should be impeached or not depends on his attitude to his party, that is to say whether he can be pardoned or not by his own party as well as the struggle between two main parties. 

So it depends on the result of relations between the president and his party, and that between the two parties, rather than a clear-cut condition for impeachment. 

Former Trump campaign team chairman Paul Manafort has also been found guilty on eight charges of tax fraud, bank fraud and failing to disclose foreign banks accounts. Scandals have surfaced one after another from the Trump bloc, all of which indicate that Trump has a bad future for the midterms whose results will certainly mean a lot to his presidential career and even decide whether he could run again in two years time. 

Influential Republican Party members on the Capitol Hill have so far tolerated Trump and have seldom openly criticized him, but the situation will change if he is convicted for nobody would like to be kidnapped by a reckless leader like Trump.