Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
COHEN ADMITS GUILT IN PLEA DEAL
Longtime ‘fixer’ implicates Trump in hush-money scheme before 2016 election
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 Muellers 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.