Of the potential 18 leveled against him, he was only charged with eight: Five counts of filing fake tax returns, one count of failing to report foreign bank accounts, and two counts of bank fraud. Judge T.S. Ellis declared a mistrial on the other 10, as the jury was incapable of reaching a verdict.
None of the charges of which he was found guilty had anything to do with his work on the Trump campaign to the point where some of them predate the campaign by as much as six years, and nearly all of them taking place during the time when he was working for the Podesta Group. I can understand why the media would be chomping at the bit over this, since they practically fall to their knees with mouths agape at the very mention of the Special Counsel, but I've seen nothing in any of these filings to suggest that even an ounce of this is going to "move upstream."
Even these "revelations" concerning the Stormy Daniels payments were already made in the Cohen tapes nearly a month ago, so I've no idea why they're trying to rebrand that as fresh news. I know that they'd absolutely love it if an FEC violation was buried in there somewhere, but Cohen didn't work for the Trump campaign and he didn't have access to the campaign's funding. Cohen paid Daniels from his own funds, and Trump reimbursed him from his own funds, and a candidate can contribute as much as they want to their own campaign, so there's nothing there for the FEC to even get mad about, that I know of. It's a completely standard practice for a lawyer to pay someone else and then charge their client for "legal fees" like that, there wasn't even anything unusual about that. I'd be very surprised if there was something illegal about it.
If Cohen had even a scintilla of evidence that could have been bartered to avoid getting him thrown into a prison cell, he would have used it by now. I love how confused the media's becoming over all of this, though. "Papadopoulos wore a wire! He's cooperating!" And then that narrative died. "Cohen is cooperating! You're going down, Trump!" And then that narrative died. "Manafort is cooperating! It has to be him!" And then that narrative died.
The only person left is Michael Flynn, and that case just keeps getting delayed further and further back, because the Special Counsel is effectively completely paralyzed in that case with the OIG report for the FISA warrants still looming in the wings. The media just can't seem to figure out why that would be the case though, so they spend a very limited amount of time talking about Michael Flynn these days, which is a bit ironic considering that the case against him is the only case that matters.
So that's 3/4 for the Special Counsel's "big guns" now, and still nothing's changed. Here's hoping they saved the best for last, because they're running out of time.