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\"Well, whether it was legal or not remains to be seen,\" Schiff said. \"It certainly wasn’t very cool. More than that, it was very compromising of our country.\"

Cohen's guilty plea comes at a pivotal time for Democrats in Congress. Schiff, currently the ranking member of the Intelligence Committee, is set to become the committee's chairman, a powerful post that will enable Democrats to wield subpoena power as they take up new investigations.

Earlier last week, it was revealed that Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign chairman convicted in September on eight counts of federal tax and fraud crimes, had broken his cooperation agreement with the special counsel. ABC News reported, and Trump's attorney Rudy Giuliani confirmed, that Manafort's legal team was in communication with the president’s lawyers regarding the Mueller probe.

Schiff said that it appears Manafort was \"double dealing\" by sharing information with Trump’s legal team.

\"Basically, he was going through the pretense of cooperating, but he was really -- in an underhanded way -- supplying information to [the] Trump legal defense team,\" Schiff said.

The filing by Mueller in the Manafort case has sparked new interest in a potential presidential pardon for Manafort, 69, who is currently in prison in Virginia awaiting sentencing. Trump, when asked about it by the New York Post last week, said, \"It was never discussed, but I wouldn't take it off the table.\"

\"PHOTO:
Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images, FILE
PHOTO: Paul Manafort arrives for a hearing at US District Court in Washington, D.C., June 15, 2018.
>

Schiff said, \"And of course the president continues to dangle a pardon for Paul Manafort, which only adds to the growing body of evidence that the president is engaged in obstructing justice.\"

\"That, I think, is the ultimate significance here.\"

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