President Trump’s longtime lawyer and “fixer” Michael Cohen was sentenced to 36 months in federal prison Wednesday in connection with his earlier guilty plea for bank and tax fraud, and for violating campaign finance laws.
Cohen was also sentenced to two months in prison for lying to federal investigators about an abandoned proposal to build a Trump Tower in Moscow, a sentence to be served concurrently with his 36-month stint.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office, which is investigating collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian officials and possible obstruction by the president and his associates, said Cohen lied about the timeline for that project and Trump’s knowledge of a deal that would have rewarded Russian President Vladimir Putin with a $50 million penthouse in the new building. Cohen previously claimed talks with Kremlin-linked officials ended in January 2016, when in reality they continued well into the summer that year, around the time Trump accepted the Republican presidential nomination.
Judge William Pauley also ordered Cohen to pay more than $1 million in restitution Wednesday, for what he described as a “veritable smorgasbord of fraudulent conduct.”
Cohen has been ordered to surrender on March 6, 2019.
During his court appearance, Cohen took responsibility “for each act that I pled guilty to — the personal ones to me and those involving the President of the United States of America.”
He also took aim at Trump, who has criticized Cohen repeatedly over the past few months for cooperating with both Mueller and the Southern District of New York, which brought the tax and bank fraud charges against him earlier this year on a referral from Mueller’s office.
Cohen previously implicated the president in his campaign finance crimes, which stem from hush money payments Cohen arranged on behalf of Trump ahead of the 2016 election to two women who claim to have had affairs with Trump. Cohen said Trump directed him personally to make the payments, to stop the women from taking their stories public, which would have hurt Trump’s White House bid.
American Media Inc., the National Enquirer’s parent company, also admitted to prosecutors from the Southern District of New York this week that it had worked with the Trump campaign to purchase and bury negative stories about Trump, to prevent them from influencing the outcome of the 2016 election.
“Recently the president tweeted a statement calling me weak and it was correct but for a much different reason than he was implying. It was because time and time again I felt it was my duty to cover up his dirty deeds,” Cohen said Wednesday.
He continued, “This may seem hard to believe, but today is one of the most meaningful days of my life. I have been living in a personal and mental incarceration ever since the day that I accepted the offer to work for a real estate mogul whose business acumen that I deeply admired.”
Cohen’s lawyer, Lanny Davis, told reporters after the hearing that his client was prepared to speak at length about the president and his alleged crimes, once Mueller’s office had finished its report on the Trump-Russia investigation.
Cohen attorney Lanny Davis says that "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."
— erica orden (@eorden) December 12, 2018
Lanny Davis: "At the appropriate time … I look forward to assisting Michael to state publicly all he knows about Mr. Trump" pic.twitter.com/V32OasKVHt
— Jordan Fabian (@Jordanfabian) December 12, 2018
“I look forward to assisting Michael to state publicly all he knows about Mr. Trump,” he said, “and that includes any appropriate Congressional committee interested in the search for truth and the difference between facts and lies. Mr. Trump’s repeated lies cannot contradict stubborn facts.”
Davis, who will no longer serve as Cohen’s lawyer post-sentencing, said he would continue to serve “as [his] communications advisor.”
Cohen pleaded guilty in August to several counts of tax and bank fraud, tied to his troubled taxi medallion business in New York and Chicago, in addition to the campaign finance violations. Prosecutors said Cohen failed to report at least $4 million in income from that business and falsified documents to obtain several loans and lines of credit, to maintain a lavish lifestyle.
In November, Cohen also pleaded guilty to making false statements to federal investigators on Mueller’s team regarding the Moscow Trump Tower project. Cohen said he had discussed the project with Trump on at least three occasions and had discussed arrangements for Trump to visit Russia, though the arrangements eventually fell through.
Trump at the time insisted he had no business arrangements in Russia.
Despite this, the president has continually tried to distance himself from Cohen’s crimes, claiming in November that his longtime lawyer “was convicted of various things unrelated to us” and had only cooperated with Mueller’s team to get a reduced prison sentence.
“He’s a weak person and what he’s trying to do is get a reduced sentence,” he said.