Cohen seeks ‘time served’ sentence

President’s ex-personal attorney says crimes he pleaded guilty to were meant to protect Trump

Lawyers for former Trump personal attorney Michael Cohen argued Friday that their client should not go to prison for the criminal charges to which he has pleaded guilty, and unequivocally linked much of his wrongdoing to his desire to protect and support President Donald Trump.

In a late-night court filing, lawyers for the onetime Trump loyalist wrote that their client was a changed man who was eager to share his knowledge with law enforcement and mindful that he would have to “begin his life virtually anew.” Their filing detailed what they said was Cohen’s already extensive cooperation, including seven voluntary interviews with the team of special counsel Robert Mueller, as well as meetings with federal prosecutors in New York, representatives of the New York State Attorney General’s office and officials with the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance, which are conducting wide ranging probes into Trump’s campaign and his family foundation.

Friday’s filing in no uncertain terms connected Cohen’s wrongdoing to Trump. Cohen’s lawyers asserted, for example, that Cohen paid off women to keep quiet about alleged affairs with the president to stop them from “disseminating narratives that would adversely affect the Campaign and cause personal embarrassment.” And they said Cohen lied about efforts to finalize a Trump business project in Moscow during the heart of the campaign because he knew it was Trump’s “strongly voiced mantra” to minimize the investigation into connections between his campaign and the Kremlin. In fact, lawyers for Cohen alleged that he and Trump discussed the possibility of Trump traveling to Russia in the summer of 2016.

Cohen had pleaded guilty in August to five counts of tax evasion, one count of making a false statement to a bank and two campaign finance violations, admitting at that time he and the chief executive of a media company worked in the summer of 2016 to keep an individual from publicly disclosing information that could hurt Trump’s campaign. Two women had alleged extramarital affairs with Trump, which the president denies.

On Thursday, Cohen added an additional guilty plea, admitting that he lied to Congress about an ultimately unsuccessful effort to build a Trump building in Russia. He is expected to be sentenced Dec. 12, and prosecutors have yet to submit their own recommendation.