Presiding over political destabilisation in US

Trump is increasingly likely to turn developments in the Manafort and Cohen cases to his advantage and to exploit the country’s searing political divide, writes Peter Apps

The mixed verdict in the trial of Paul Manafort, Donald Trump’s former campaign manager, along with the guilty plea on campaign finance violations by the US president’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, is a sign of just how messy, and perhaps inconclusive, special prosecutor Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election will be.