‘BLIND LOYALTY’ LED DOWN TO ‘DARKNESS’
‘Smorgasbord’ of misdeeds brings 3-year sentence
NEW YORK – Michael Cohen was sentenced Wednesday to three years in prison, making the longtime personal attorney for Donald Trump the first member of the president’s inner circle to serve time in a case that could place the former real estate mogul in legal jeopardy.
Cohen, known for years as Trump’s fixer in legal and business matters, pleaded guilty in August to a series of crimes, including campaign finance violations and tax evasion in the Southern District of New York. Cohen admitted last month that he lied to Congress in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.
“My own weakness was blind loyalty to the man that caused me to choose the path of darkness,” Cohen said, his voice cracking. “Time and time again, I felt it was my duty to cover up his dirty deeds.”
Cohen said he took “full responsibility” for the nine felonies to which he pleaded guilty – “the personal ones to me and those involving the president of the United States of America.”
Cohen must surrender for prison March 6. He
“Time and time again, I felt it was my duty to cover up his dirty deeds.”
Michael Cohen President Trump’s former lawyer
was ordered to pay $1.4 million in restitution for his unpaid taxes and $100,000 in fines.
Manhattan U.S. District Court Judge William Pauley walked through each of the counts against Cohen, saying, “Each of these crimes is a serious offense against the United States.” Pauley agreed to a modest reduction of Cohen’s prison sentence to reward him for his cooperation but said his “veritable smorgasbord of fraudulent conduct” required a punishment to match.
“Somewhere along the way, Mr. Cohen appears to have lost his moral compass,” Pauley said. “Our democratic institutions depend on the honesty of our citizenry in dealing with the government.”
After Pauley announced his sentence to a crowded Manhattan courtroom, Cohen’s father, Maurice, 83, who had entered in a wheelchair, held his face in his hands. “I’m dizzy as hell,” he said. “My world is spinning out of control.” Cohen’s daughter Samantha had limped into court on a crutch. She started to sob as sentencing was pronounced.
Cohen, who once said he would take a bullet for Trump, cooperated with Mueller’s team and provided prosecutors with a potential bounty of information about the Trump campaign’s contacts with the Kremlin. Prosecutors said he gave them information about “core” aspects of the Russia investigation, based in part on his connections to Trump’s private company and his administration.
Cohen said his cooperation was a way of “ensuring that history will not remember me as the villain of this story.” He apologized to his family and the public, who “deserved to know the truth.”
Rudy Giuliani, former New York mayor and Trump’s personal attorney, dismissed Cohen as a “complete liar” and a “scoundrel” and said that what the president’s former associate told prosecutors doesn’t matter.
Cohen and Trump once seemed a united team. Trump’s fame and wealth grew with the licensing of his name and his starring role in “The Apprentice,” while Cohen took on the real estate developer’s critics in legal combat.
Their relationship ruptured this year as federal prosecutors and Mueller investigated both men. Cohen cemented the split as he sought leniency Wednesday, telling the judge he had been in a form of “personal and mental incarceration” since the day he began working for the businessman.
“Today is the day I am getting my freedom back,” he said.
Cohen is the first member of Trump’s inner circle to be sentenced in the tandem criminal investigations that cast a shadow over the presidency. Three other senior aides – former national security adviser Michael Flynn, former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his deputy Rick Gates – are scheduled to be sentenced in the coming months after they pleaded guilty to federal crimes. George Papadopoulos, a former aide to Trump’s campaign, completed a 14-day prison sentence for lying to the FBI about a person he thought was a Russian offering “dirt” on Hillary Clinton.
Lanny Davis, a lawyer representing Cohen, said his client will continue to share what he knows about his former boss.
“At the appropriate time, after Mr. Mueller completes his investigation and issues his final report, I look forward to assisting Michael to state publicly all he knows about Mr. Trump – and that includes any appropriate congressional committee interested in the search for truth and the difference between facts and lie,” Davis said. “Mr. Trump’s re- peated lies cannot contradict stubborn facts.”
Mueller’s investigation began in May
2017. The New York prosecutors executed search warrants at Cohen’s office, home and hotel room last year after being referred by Mueller’s team.
The New York prosecutors said Cohen paid hush money to former Playboy model Karen McDougal and adult film star Stormy Daniels to keep them from publicizing claims they had sexual affairs with Trump, potentially jeopardizing his presidential campaign. Trump denied the women’s accounts.
Michael Avenatti, the lawyer who represented Daniels, called it “an outrage” that Cohen did not get a stiffer sentence and said the case suggested trouble for Trump. “Michael Cohen is neither a hero nor a patriot. Only when his back was against the wall and he faced significant prison time, did he choose to ‘ come clean,’ ” Avenatti said. “Michael Cohen was sentenced today. Donald Trump is next.”
The Manhattan prosecutors endorsed Cohen’s assertion that the payments to the women, without required public disclosure and over campaign contribution giving limits, were made at Trump’s direction. That allegation, if proved, would implicate the president in the crime.
Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to banks about his income and assets as he sought loans, and to evading more than
$1 million in federal tax payments. Separately, Cohen pleaded guilty last month to lying to the Senate and House Intelligence Committees as the panels examined allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Cohen admitted he lied last year when he told the panels that plans to build a Trump Tower in Moscow were dropped in January 2016, before the start of the Republican presidential primaries. He acknowledged that discussions actually continued into June 2016. By then, Trump was the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.
In a sentencing memo filed last week, Mueller’s team said Cohen provided information showing that someone claiming to have Russian ties reached out to the attorney – and by extension the Trump presidential campaign, as well as Trump – earlier than was known publicly.
Trump has repeatedly criticized Cohen since their relationship ended.
He said last month that his erstwhile attorney was a “weak person” and accused him of providing false testimony in the hope of a lighter sentence.
Trump called him a liar who should “serve a full and complete sentence.”
Cohen acknowledged the tweet but called himself “weak in a different way.”
“My weakness can be characterized as blind loyalty to Donald Trump,” Cohen said.
The New York prosecutors recommended that Cohen serve roughly 42 months in prison. Federal sentencing guidelines suggest 51 to 63 months. The prosecutors said Cohen merited some reduction for cooperating with Mueller. But they said he did not qualify as a cooperating witness because he “repeatedly declined to provide full information about the scope of any additional criminal conduct in which he may have engaged or had knowledge.”
Mueller’s team called Cohen’s assistance “useful.” The team cited information he provided about his contacts with Russian interests during the presidential campaign, as well as his contacts with people connected with the White House in 2017 and 2018.
Mueller’s team recommended that any sentence Pauley imposed for Cohen’s lies to Congress run concurrently with any sentence the judge ordered for the crimes investigated by the Southern District of New York.
Cohen’s attorneys argued that he should be spared prison time.
They noted that Cohen met with the New York attorney general’s office and the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance about issues related to Trump and his charitable foundation.
“He could have fought the government and continued to hold to the party line, positioning himself for a pardon or clemency,” the attorneys wrote, “but instead – for himself, his family and his country – he took personal responsibility for his own wrongdoing and contributed, and is prepared to continue to contribute, to an investigation that he views as thoroughly legitimate and vital.”
“Somewhere along the way,
Mr. Cohen appears to have
lost his moral compass.
Our democratic institutions
depend on the honesty of
our citizenry in dealing with
the government.” William Pauley Manhattan U.S. District Court Judge