I never ordered Cohen to break the law: Trump
WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump tried to shield himself from rising legal heat on Thursday with tweets insisting that he never ordered his former lawyer Michael Cohen to break the law.
The US president enters his third year in office facing an increasingly perilous situation as federal prosecutors and the special probe into alleged collusion with Russia close in on him and his inner circle.
But he was as combative as ever on Twitter when he sought to distance himself from his longtime former attorney, saying, “I never directed Michael Cohen to break the law.”
Cohen was sentenced on Wednesday in New York federal court to three years behind bars for crimes including illegal hush money payments to an adult actress and a Playboy model who allegedly had slept with Trump.
Trump has denied having sexual relations with either of the women.
But according to Cohen, the payments - which violated campaign finance laws - were designed to bury potential scandal at the height of the 2016 presidential campaign in which Trump surprised many by defeating his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton.
Cohen, who pleaded guilty to all the charges against him, told the court that he had felt it was his “duty to cover up (Trump’s) dirty deeds.”
In his first public reaction since the sentencing, Trump said that he was the victim of the attorney’s malpractice.
“He was a lawyer and he is supposed to know the law,” Trump tweeted. “It is called ‘advice of counsel’ and a lawyer has great liability if a mistake is made. That is why they get paid.”