Trump’s ex-lawyer pleads guilty to lying to Congress

NEW YORK: President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer and ixer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty in a New York court on Thursday in connection with misleading Congress over the ongoing Russia investigation, US media reported.

The 52-year-old exited a Manhattan federal court dressed in a suit on Thursday, ignoring questions from a mob of reporters and got wordlessly into the back of a vehicle before being driven away.

In September, his lawyer said that Cohen had been providing “critical information” to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators.

Cohen, once one of Trump’s top aides, began talking with the Mueller investigation after he pleaded guilty on Aug.21 to bank fraud and campaign inance violations in an separate deal with New York prosecutors.

Mueller is investigating whether the Trump election campaign in 2016 colluded with Russian efforts to damage his opponent, Hillary Clinton, and whether Trump has sought to illegally obstruct the investigation.

But the span of the investigation also reportedlyencompassestrump’sbusiness dealings, to which Cohen had a front row seat for years as a senior executive in the president’s real estate business in New York, the Trump Organisation.

Once known as Trump’s “pit bull” and right-hand man, Cohen was privy to multi-million-dollar deals and payments to two alleged lovers — whose claims could have potentially sabotaged his boss’s 2016 election.

In August, Cohen pleaded guilty to charges involving his arrangement of payouts of hush money to those women — widely thought to be porn star Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen Mcdougal — before the 2016 election.