U.S.: Ex-Trump lawyer deserves prison
President WASHINGTON — Donald Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, deserves a substantial prison sentence despite his cooperation in a hush money payment case
that implicated the president, federal prosecutors said Friday.
Court filings by prosecutors from both New York and the Trump-Russia special counsel’s office laid out for
the first time details of the cooperation of a vital witness who once said he’d “take a bullet” for the president but who in recent months has become a prime antagonist. He is to be sentenced next week.
They filings reveal that Cohen told prosecutors he and Trump discussed a potential meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in 2015, shortly after Trump announced his candidacy for president.
In a footnote, special coun- sel Robert Mueller’s team writes that Cohen conferred with Trump “about contacting the Russia government before reaching out to gauge Russia’s interest in such a meeting,” though it never took place.
An additional filing was expected later Friday in the case of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who prosecutors say lied to them even after agreeing to cooperate.
Prosecutors in Cohen’s case said that even though he cooperated in their investigation into hush money payments made to two women who said they had sex with Trump, he none-
theless deserves to spend time in prison.
“Cohen did provide infor- mation to law enforcement,
including information that assisted the Special Coun- sel’s Office,” they said. “But Cohen’s description of those efforts is overstated in some respects and incomplete in others.”
In meetings with Muel-
ler’s team, Cohen “provided information about his own
contacts with Russian interests during the campaign and discussions with others in the course of making
those contacts,” the court documents said.
Cohen provided prosecutors with a “detailed account” of his involvement, along with the involvement of others, in efforts during the 2016 presidential campaign to complete a deal to build a Trump Tower Moscow, the documents said. He also provided information about attempts by Russian nationals to reach Trump’s campaign, they said.
However, in the crimes to which he pleaded guilty in August, he was motivated “by personal greed and repeatedly used his power and influence for deceptive ends.”
Prosecutors said the court’s Probation Department estimated that federal sentencing guidelines call for Cohen to serve at least four years in prison. They said that “reflects Cohen’s
extensive, deliberate and serious criminal conduct.”
Prosecutors say Cohen “already enjoyed a privileged life,” and that “his desire for even greater wealth and influence precipitated an
extensive course of crimi- nal conduct.”
Last week, Cohen made a surprise guilty plea to lying to Congress, a move that refo- cused attention on Trump’s ties to Russia during the 2016 campaign.
He admitted he lied about the details of a proposed Trump Tower in Moscow, saying that talks about the project went on until June 2016 — longer than he had previously said. Cohen also said he discussed the project
with Trump during the presidential campaign, undercutting the then-Republican presidential candidate’s statements that he didn’t have any deals in Russia.
Trump has downplayed the project and stressed that he never put any money into the deal and ultimately decided not to do it.
In Manafort’s case, prosecutors were expected to lay out what torpedoed the cooperation agreement he made when he pleaded guilty in September to two felony charges of conspiracy.
In late November, prosecutors said Manafort had repeatedly lied to them but did not say about what. The allegations exposed him to the possibility of addi
tional criminal charges and a lengthier prison sentence.
Manafort’s atto r neys have denied he made false statements, and a judge is expected to hear from them before deciding whether he actually lied. Manafort, who was convicted in August in federal court in Virginia of eight financial crimes, also awaits sentencing in that case.
Also Friday, the Federal Bureau of Prisons confirmed that George Papadopoulos, the first person sent to prison in the Russia investigation, was released after serving his 14-day sentence.
The former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser pleaded guilty last year to lying to the FBI about his
contacts with Russian intermediaries. Those contacts during the presidential campaign prompted the FBI in July 2016 to open a counterintelligence investigation. That investigation was later taken over by Mueller.