Cohen pleads guilty, implicates president
Trump knew about hush money, his ex-lawyer says
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer and longtime “fixer,” Michael Cohen, pleaded guilty Tuesday to eight charges of felony fraud and campaign finance law violations — and implicated Trump for directing him to arrange payments to buy the silence of two women who said they had affairs with him.
Cohen, who had vowed as recently as last year to “take a bullet” to protect Trump, now poses what could be a legal threat to his presidency by fingering him in an alleged conspiracy to violate campaign laws.
During a hearing before U.S. District Court Judge William Pauley in Manhattan, Cohen said he had facilitated $280,000 in hush money payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal “in coordination and at the direction of a candidate for federal office.”
Cohen, 51, did not name the candidate but one of his lawyers, Lanny Davis, tweeted afterward that his client had “testified under oath that Donald Trump directed him to commit a crime by making payments to two women for the principal purpose of influencing an election.”
In his guilty plea, Cohen admitted that he helped arrange the payments during the 2016 presidential election that bought — until after the election — the silence of the two women. Trump
has denied their affair claims.
Those payments — $150,000 from the parent company of the National Enquirer in September 2016 to McDougal, and $130,000 the next month from Cohen himself to Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford — violated federal campaign law, according to terms of the guilty plea.
The law prohibits corporations from donating to a candidate for federal office. And Cohen personally paid $130,000 to Daniels, although he later obtained reimbursement from the campaign. The law forbids individuals from donating more than $5,400 per election cycle to a federal candidate.
Cohen could be sentenced up to five years in prison, although his sentence could be reduced in exchange for cooperation with special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election and its possible collaboration with Trump’s campaign.
Although nothing was said in court about Cohen’s potential cooperation, Davis said in a tweet that Cohen “is fulfilling his promise” on July 2 to “put his family and country first and tell the truth about Donald Trump.”
The guilty plea was disclosed just as a federal jury in Alexandria, Va., convicted Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort of eight charges of tax evasion and bank fraud. The judge declared a mistrial on 10 other charges after the jury deadlocked on them.
The high-profile convictions highlighted the scandals and legal problems that have shrouded the White House since Trump took office. A total of six people, including the president’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, have pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, and several senior Trump advisers have been forced out for ethical lapses.
Robert Khusami, a deputy U.S. attorney, said outside the courthouse that Cohen had paid the money “to silence two women who had information that he believed would be detrimental to the 2016 campaign and to the candidate.”
Khuzami said Cohen facilitated the payments “for the purpose of influencing the 2016 election.”
Outside legal experts said Cohen’s guilty plea on the campaign finance charges poses a danger to Trump.
“If (Cohen) violated the campaign finance laws — then there would be risk to Trump and his campaign that they violated the campaign finance laws,” said Jan W. Baran, a former general counsel of the Republican National Committee who now is a partner at the Washington law firm Wiley Rein LLP.
Trump ignored reporters’ shouted questions about Cohen’s guilty plea when he landed in Charleston, W.Va., for a nighttime rally with supporters, and the White House declined comment. Rudy Giuliani, one of his lawyers, defended Trump in a statement.
“There is no allegation of any wrongdoing against the President in the government’s charges against Mr. Cohen,” Giuliani said. “It is clear that, as the prosecutor noted, Mr. Cohen’s actions reflect a pattern of lies and dishonesty over a significant period of time.”
Cohen pleaded guilty to eight felonies. Five counts related to tax evasion, in which he failed to report to the IRS about $4.1 million of income. A separate count specified that Cohen lied to a lending institution in obtaining a $500,000 line of credit. The remaining two counts were for his campaign law violations.
Harry Litman, a former U.S. attorney in Pittsburgh, said the significance of Cohen’s guilty plea is “pretty much equivalent to the question — what does Michael Cohen know” about Trump’s conduct.
More narrowly, Litman said, much will hinge on Cohen’s knowledge of the circumstances surrounding the payments to McDougal and Daniels, and “whether Trump knew about them.” Those payments, Litman said, “very possibly amount to wire fraud, and if Trump was in on them, that’s flat out conspiracy.”