Editorials of The Times

Pardon us, but was it only three weeks ago that President Donald Trump expressed “such respect” for Paul Manafort, his former campaign chairman and freshly minted felon, who had refused to cooperate with the special counsel’s office and took his federal bank- and tax-fraud conviction like a “brave man”?

That tribute was meant to highlight the president’s contempt for the decision by his former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, to plead guilty that same day to his own charges of bank fraud, tax fraud and campaign-finance violations. Unlike the weak Cohen, Trump wrote on Twitter, Manafort “refused to ‘break’ — make up stories in order to get a ‘deal.'”

So much for that. Trump’s expectation that there is any honor among thieves has been confounded once again.

On Friday, Manafort broke in a big way — agreeing to cooperate “fully, truthfully, completely, and forthrightly” regarding “any and all matters” the special counsel, Robert Mueller, wants him to.

The bombshell agreement was part of a guilty plea Manafort entered in a separate case in a Washington federal court, relating to his lucrative lobbying work for pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine. He copped to charges of conspiring to defraud the United States and to obstruct justice, each of which carries a sentence of up to five years in prison. Manafort also agreed to forfeit $46 million in cash and property derived from his crimes.

In return, Mueller agreed to drop five other counts, which included money laundering and failing to register as a foreign agent, and not to retry Manafort on 10 counts over which last month’s jury deadlocked.

Unless Trump is watching Fox News, he can’t be feeling too good right now. In January, NBC News reported that he had told friends and aides he had decided Manafort wouldn’t “flip” on him. And the two men’s lawyers have been in regular contact as part of a joint defense agreement, according to Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani. If any of those conversations involved the dangling of a pardon for Manafort — which prosecutors might consider to be obstruction of justice — they would not be protected by any privilege and would probably be fair game for Mueller.

What else might Manafort reveal? Mueller is very interested in that curious meeting he attended, along with Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner, at Trump Tower in June 2016 — the one with the Russian government representative who promised to provide “dirt” on Hillary Clinton.

The White House’s defense is that the crimes for which Manafort was convicted, committed long before joining the Trump campaign, have nothing to do with the president.

The bad news for Trump is that there are still many unanswered questions about how Manafort exploited his Russian connections in the service of helping Trump’s campaign, and whether Trump knew or was involved in any way. Beyond the Trump Tower meeting, there’s evidence that Manafort hoped to use the campaign job — for which he took no paycheck — to help Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch with close ties to President Vladimir Putin, and to extract himself from a multimillion-dollar debt to the tycoon.

For now, Manafort can take comfort in the knowledge that he joins an ever-growing crowd of top Trump associates who have pleaded guilty to federal offenses: Michael Flynn, the president’s former national security adviser; George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign; Rick Gates, Manafort’s business partner and deputy campaign chairman; and Cohen, whose case is being handled by federal prosecutors in Manhattan. All have agreed to cooperate with authorities, except Cohen — and even that may be changing.

How many more guilty pleas and convictions will there be in Trumpworld before all this crime starts to look — how can we put it — organized?

New York voters have spoken, and Gov. Andrew Cuomo remains the most powerful man in New York politics.

The governor won a resounding victory over actress and activist Cynthia Nixon in the Democratic primary, protected by a $31 million campaign war chest that helped clear the field of candidates who might have proved more formidable.

His pick for state attorney general, Letitia James, also won big, making it likely his third term will unfold without the inconvenience of someone more independent, like James’ opponent, Zephyr Teachout, examining his administration.

Yet there were also signs that change was finally knocking on Albany’s door.

Even though it was held, unusually, on a Thursday, more than twice as many people voted in this year’s Democratic primary than did four years ago, a sign of an energized electorate that could pay huge dividends for Democrats in November. If James wins in November, which is likely, she will become New York’s first black state attorney general and the first black woman to win statewide office.

Most exciting, reformers across New York City ousted entrenched incumbents in races for Democratic state Senate nominations, all but eliminating a once-powerful group who had formed a rogue alliance that handed power to Republican senators in exchange for perks, campaign cash and other benefits. Six of the eight former members of the alliance, known as the Independent Democratic Conference, were ousted.

The sweetest victory was Alessandra Biaggi’s hard-fought defeat of the former IDC kingmaker Jeffrey Klein in a district straddling the Bronx and Westchester.

“We have now cut the head of the IDC snake,” Biaggi, a former Cuomo administration official, told supporters at her raucous election party Thursday night.

Zellnor Myrie, a lawyer and community organizer who has fought hard for tenants’ rights, won in Brooklyn, unseating state Sen. Jesse Hamilton, another former IDC member.

Jessica Ramos, a labor organizer and former spokeswoman for Mayor Bill de Blasio, beat state Sen. Jose Peralta, also formerly of the IDC.

If Democrats can take control of the Senate in November, these reformists can help shape an agenda for Albany that would include legislation that many felt the IDC allowed Republicans to block for years: college aid for immigrant “Dreamers,” the strengthening of reproductive rights for women and desperately needed protections for tenants in New York City.

The turnout itself may have been the most encouraging sign. Nearly 1.5 million Democrats voted Thursday, according to an analysis of Board of Elections data. While turnout should be much higher — just over 1 out of 4 registered Democrats voted — it is a solid step in the right direction.

As Shane Goldmacher, a politics reporter for The Times, noted on Twitter Thursday night, more people voted for Nixon this year than voted for Cuomo four years ago — even as Cuomo won roughly the same percentage of the overall vote as he did then.

Albany was never going to change overnight.

But thanks to reform-minded candidates willing to challenge powerful incumbents, and voters willing to show up to the polls to support them, New York is a little more democratic than before. To keep the state moving forward, New Yorkers will have to vote in larger and larger numbers, for races from the governor’s office to the school board.

As Cuomo likes to say, “Excelsior.”