Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney, was sentenced to three years in prison after pleading guilty to a series of crimes, including campaign finance violations, tax evasion and lying to Congress.
Cohen, known for several years as Trump’s fixer in legal and business matters, has become the first member of the president’s inner circle to be sentenced to prison in a case with potential legal implications for the president. Cohen’s sentencing comes after he pleaded guilty in cases with prosecutors in the Southern District of New York and with special counsel Robert Mueller’s team.
Before the sentence was imposed, Cohen said he took “full responsibility” for the crimes, “for each act that I pled guilty to: The personal ones to me and those involving the President of the United States of America.”
He said “blind loyalty” to Trump “led me to take a path of darkness instead of light.”
He also said he felt it was his duty to cover up the president’s “dirty deeds.”
Manhattan U.S.District Court Judge William Pauley walked through each of the counts against Cohen, saying “each of these crimes is a serious offense against the United States.”
“Mr. Cohen pled guilty to a veritable smorgasbord of fraudulent conduct,” he said.
Cohen, who once said he would take a bullet for Trump, has been cooperating with Mueller’s team, which is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and has provided prosecutors with a potential bounty of information about the Trump campaign’s contacts with the Kremlin.
Cohen and Trump, the former real estate developer, once seemed a united team, as Trump expanded his business empire and his fame by licensing his famous name and starring in The Apprentice while Cohen took on Trump critics in legal combat.
But their relationship ruptured this year as federal prosecutors and Mueller investigated both men.
Mueller’s ongoing investigation began in May 2017. The New York prosecutors executed search warrants at Cohen’s office, home and hotel room last year after being referred by Mueller’s team.
Cohen pleaded guilty in August to campaign finance violations, tax evasion and lying to banks.
The New York prosecutors say he paid hush money to former Playboy Model Karen McDougal and adult film star Stormy Daniels to keep them from publicizing claims they had sexual affairs with him, potentially jeopardizing his presidential campaign.
Trump has denied the women’s accounts.
The Manhattan prosecutors endorsed Cohen’s assertion that the transactions, without required public disclosure and over campaign contribution giving limits, were made at Trump’s direction – implicating the president in a felony.
Cohen also pleaded guilty to lying to banks about his income and assets as he sought loans, and to evading more than $1 million in federal tax payments.
Separately, Cohen pleaded guilty last month to lying to the Senate and House intelligence committees as the panels examined allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Cohen admitted he lied last year when he told the panels that plans to build a potential Trump Tower in Moscow were dropped in January 2016, before the start of the Republican presidential primaries.
Cohen acknowledged that the planning actually continued into June 2016. By then, Trump was the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.
In a sentencing memo filed last week, Mueller’s team said Cohen also provided information showing that someone claiming to have Russian ties reached out to the attorney – and by extension the Trump presidential campaign as well as Trump – earlier than was known publicly.
The Russian national claimed the ability to help arrange “synergy on a government level” for the Trump Tower Moscow project, the team wrote. The contact came in or around February 2015.
The unnamed person proposed a meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, the team wrote.
“The person told Cohen that such a meeting could have a ‘phenomenal’ impact, ‘not only in political but in a business dimension as well,'” the team wrote, “because there is ‘no bigger warranty in any project than consent of'” Putin.
Cohen did not follow up on the invitation, the team wrote, because he had been in touch with someone else he believed had Russian government ties.
Trump has repeatedly criticized Cohen since their relationship ended.
He told reporters last month that his erstwhile attorney was a “weak person,” and accused him of providing false testimony to Mueller in the hope of getting a lighter sentence.
Trump later called Cohen a liar, and said he should “serve a full and complete sentence.
“Michael Cohen asks judge for no Prison Time.” You mean he can do all of the TERRIBLE, unrelated to Trump, things having to do with fraud, big loans, Taxis, etc., and not serve a long prison term? He makes up stories to get a GREAT & ALREADY reduced deal for himself, and get…..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 3, 2018
….his wife and father-in-law (who has the money?) off Scott Free. He lied for this outcome and should, in my opinion, serve a full and complete sentence.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 3, 2018
The New York prosecutors recommended last week that Cohen serve roughly 42 months in prison. Federal sentencing guidelines suggest 51 to 63 months.
They prosecutors said Cohen merited some reduction for cooperating with Mueller.
But they said he did not qualify as a cooperating witness because he “repeatedly declined to provide full information about the scope of any additional criminal conduct in which he may have engaged or had knowledge.”
Mueller’s team called Cohen’s assistance “useful.”
The team cited information he provided about his contacts with Russian interests during the presidential campaign, as well as his contacts with persons connected with the White House in 2017 and 2018.
The team wrote that Cohen provided information about matters “core” to Mueller’s investigation that the attorney obtained “by virtue of his regular contact” with executives of The Trump Organization during the presidential campaign.
As a result, Mueller’s team recommended that any sentence Pauley imposed for Cohen’s lies to Congress run concurrently with any sentence the judge ordered for the crimes investigated by the Southern District of New York.
Cohen’s attorneys argued that he should be spared prison time because he had pleaded guilty and given information to both investigative teams.
They noted that Cohen also met with the New York Attorney General’s office and the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance about issues related to Trump and or his charitable foundation.
And they pointed out that Cohen did not join Trump’s repeated criticism of Mueller’s investigations.
“He could have fought the government and continued to hold to the party line, positioning himself for a pardon or clemency,” the attorneys wrote, “but, instead — for himself, his family, and his country — he took personal responsibility for his own wrongdoing and contributed, and is prepared to continue to contribute, to an investigation that he views as thoroughly legitimate and vital.”
source: USA Today
