Bad day for Trump allies
Cohen pleads guilty, says he worked with Trump to pay women to keep quiet about alleged affairs
MNEW YORK ichael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s former lawyer, made the extraordinary admission in court Tuesday that Trump had directed him to arrange payments to two women during the 2016 campaign to keep them from speaking publicly about affairs they said they had with Trump.
Cohen acknowledged the illegal payments while pleading guilty to breaking campaign finance laws and other charges, a litany of crimes that revealed both his shadowy involvement in Trump’s circle and his own corrupt business dealings.
He told a judge in U.S. District Court in Manhattan that the payments to the women were made “in coordination with and at the direction of a candidate for federal office,” implicating the president in a federal crime.
“I participated in this conduct, which on my part took place in Manhattan, for the principal purpose of influencing the election” for president in 2016, Cohen said.
The plea represented a pivotal moment in the investigation into the president, and the scene in the Manhattan courtroom was remarkable. Cohen, a longtime lawyer for Trump — and loyal confidant — described in plain-spoken language how
Trump worked with him to cover up a potential sex scandal that Trump feared would endanger his rising candidacy.
Cohen also pleaded guilty to multiple counts of tax evasion and a single count of bank fraud, capping a monthslong investigation by Manhattan federal prosecutors who examined his personal business dealings and his role in helping to arrange the financial deals with women connected to Trump.
The plea came shortly before another blow to the president: His former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, was convicted in his financial fraud trial in Virginia. The special counsel, Robert Mueller, had built a case that Manafort hid millions of dollars in foreign accounts to evade taxes and lied to banks to obtain $20 million in loans.
Trump’s lawyers have, for months, said privately that they considered Cohen’s case to be potentially more problematic for the president than the investigation by the special counsel.
But Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, said in a statement after Cohen’s plea, “There is no allegation of any wrongdoing against the president in the government’s charges against Mr. Cohen.”
In federal court in Manhattan, Cohen made the admission about Trump’s role in the payments to the women — an adult film actress and a former Playboy playmate — as he pleaded guilty to two campaign finance crimes.
One of those charges stemmed from a $130,000 payment he made to the actress, Stephanie Clifford, better known as Stormy Daniels, in the runup to the 2016 presidential election. The other concerned a complicated arrangement in which a tabloid bought the rights to the story about a former Playboy model, Karen McDougal, then killed it.
The plea agreement does not call for Cohen to cooperate with federal prosecutors in Manhattan. Still, it does not preclude him from providing information later to them or the special counsel, who is examining the Trump campaign’s possible involvement in Russia’s interference in the 2016 campaign. If Cohen were to substantially assist the special counsel’s investigation, Mueller could recommend a reduction in his sentence.
Cohen had been the president’s longtime fixer, handling his most sensitive business and personal matters. He once said he would take a bullet for Trump.
As Cohen addressed the judge, admitting to the crimes he had committed, the packed courtroom remained silent. Even when Cohen made obvious references to Trump, referring to him as “the candidate” and “a candidate for federal office,” spectators seemed to listen raptly, with no gasps or audible reactions.
Cohen pleaded guilty to five counts of tax evasion for concealing more than $4 million in personal income from 2012 to 2016 and to one count of bank fraud, for making false statements to a financial institution in connection with a series of loans. He also pleaded guilty to making an excessive campaign contribution and causing an unlawful corporate contribution during the 2016 election cycle.
He will be sentenced on Dec. 12 before Judge William Pauley. Though Cohen faces a maximum of 65 years in prison, the plea agreement provides for a far more lenient sentence: The government calculated the sentencing guidelines at from 51 to 63 months and the defense put them at 46 to 57 months. A final guidelines determination will be made by the Probation Department, but the ultimate sentence will be determined by Pauley.
Cohen’s attorney, Lanny Davis, said Cohen had put his family and country ahead of his loyalty to Trump. “He stood up and 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,” Davis said. “If those payments were a crime for Michael Cohen, then why wouldn’t they be a crime for Donald Trump?”
Looming over the negotiations between prosecutors and Cohen has been the possibility of a presidential pardon. Trump reached out to Cohen by phone a few days after the FBI raids, and they had dinner together a month earlier in March, at Trump’s private club in Florida, Mar-a-Lago. Cohen’s lawyer had loosely raised the issue of a pardon with an attorney for Trump several months ago, according to two people with knowledge of the conversations.