(CNN) Two courtroom decisions within minutes of each other, each with eight convictions, against President Donald Trump's former personal lawyer and campaign chairman engulfed Capitol Hill on Tuesday, where Republicans downplayed the connection of both cases to the White House while Democrats seized on the President's potential role and raised the prospect that he could have broken the law, too.

The guilty plea from Trump's longtime personal lawyer Michael Cohen and the guilty verdicts against Paul Manafort once again scrambled the narrative for the President and special counsel Robert Mueller, prompting dueling reactions from senators peppered with questions about the latest developments.

"If Manafort and Cohen did things that (they) shouldn't have done, which it sounds like they did, I think they ought to be held responsible for it but I don't see any of this having anything to do with the President and Russia," Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas told reporters. "My expectation is that Mr. Mueller knows the lay of the land. The fact that he interviewed Don McGahn for 30 hours with the President's approval strikes me as having nothing to hide when it comes to the Russia investigation. So I hope this ends up concluding sooner rather than later and doesn't continue to be an issue in another election."

Democrats argued the news had ramifications for the special counsel's ongoing Russia investigation.

"If, as Michael Cohen testified in his guilty plea, his felonies were committed at the direction of ‪@realDonaldTrump, then the POTUS would be part of a federal crime - the only thing limiting DOJ from prosecuting being an OLC ruling saying a sitting president cannot be indicted," Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said on Twitter.

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