Here's how Trump just got one step closer to being indicted

While sentencing former Trump attorney Michael Cohen, a federal judge made a statement that could bring Donald Trump that much closer to being indicted.

Former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti wrote in a Politico editorial that Federal Judge William H. Pauley II, Cohen's sentencing judge, "said in open court that Trump had directed his then-lawyer to commit a federal felony."

The admission was a "formality," Mariotti argued, noting that it's confirmation of what prosecutors concluded the week prior in Cohen's probation hearing.

Nevertheless, the ex-prosecutor said the statement was significant -- and that "no one in that courtroom, including the judge, disagreed that Trump directed Cohen to commit crimes."

"No competent lawyer would tell a client who was publicly implicated in a crime by federal prosecutors that the client was not at very serious risk of being indicted," Mariotti noted.

Even Andrew McCarthy, Mariotti's fellow former prosecutor and a Republican Trump defender, "concluded that Trump is likely to be indicted."

Though the timing and certainty of a potential indictment are unclear to the former prosecutor, Mariotti noted that with the criminal investigation into Cohen still underway, "others in the Trump Organization are still vulnerable to indictment and therefore it is entirely possible Trump himself would be formally named as an unindicted co-conspirator."

Read the entire editorial via Politico.