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| Trump's former fixer Michael Cohen sentenced to three years in prison | |
| (about 2 hours later) | |
| Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s longtime personal fixer, has been sentenced to 36 months in prison in New York on Wednesday for crimes including lying to Congress and facilitating illegal payments to silence two women who alleged affairs with Trump. | |
| Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen faces sentencing in New York – live | Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen faces sentencing in New York – live |
| The sentencing by the US district judge William Pauley in Manhattan capped a stunning about-face for a lawyer who once said he would “take a bullet” for Trump but has now directly implicated the president in criminal conduct. | |
| In a stunning court scene in which he described his disillusionment with Trump, Cohen said he had committed the crimes out of “blind loyalty” to the president. | |
| “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 said. “I know now, in fact, there is little to be admired.” | |
| “I take full responsibility for each act that I pled guilty to,” Cohen told the judge. “The personal ones to me and those involving the president of the United States of America … | |
| “It was my duty to cover up his dirty deeds.” | |
| Cohen, 52, admitted in August that on the eve of the 2016 presidential election he made a $130,000 payment to the porn star Stormy Daniels and arranged for a $150,000 payment to the former Playboy model Karen McDougal. | Cohen, 52, admitted in August that on the eve of the 2016 presidential election he made a $130,000 payment to the porn star Stormy Daniels and arranged for a $150,000 payment to the former Playboy model Karen McDougal. |
| Cohen’s lawyers agreed with prosecutors that those payments violated campaign finance laws, which require disclosure and allow maximum individual donations of $2,700. | Cohen’s lawyers agreed with prosecutors that those payments violated campaign finance laws, which require disclosure and allow maximum individual donations of $2,700. |
| Trump directed Cohen to make the illegal payments, prosecutors in the southern district of New York said in a court filing last week. | Trump directed Cohen to make the illegal payments, prosecutors in the southern district of New York said in a court filing last week. |
| Trump has denied the affairs with Daniels and McDougal and dismissed the six-figure hush payments to them as a “simple private transaction”, having previously denied knowledge of them. | Trump has denied the affairs with Daniels and McDougal and dismissed the six-figure hush payments to them as a “simple private transaction”, having previously denied knowledge of them. |
| Guy Petrillo, a lawyer for Cohen, argued in court for leniency, saying that Cohen offered evidence “against the most powerful person in our country … knowing that he’d face a barrage of attack by the president”, according to reporters in the room. | |
| “He knew that the president might shut down the investigation,” Petrillo said. | |
| Cohen indicated that attacks on him by Trump in recent months had personally stung. “For months now, the president of the United States publicly mocks me,” Cohen said, “calling me a rat and a liar and insisting that the court sentence me to the maximum time in prison.” | |
| Prosecutor Nicolas Roos hit back, saying that Cohen had engaged in “a pattern of deception, of brazenness and of greed” that had “eroded faith in the electoral process and the rule of law”. | |
| Pauley, the judge, said Cohen had “lost his moral compass” and committed a “veritable smorgasbord” of crimes. | |
| “The need for general deterrents is amplified in this case,” Pauley said, adding, “as a lawyer, Mr Cohen should have known better.” | |
| Cohen also faced sentencing on a separate charge of lying to Congress when he said that a Trump Organization effort to build a tower in Moscow was terminated in January 2016, as presidential primary voting got under way. In fact, the Moscow project was still in the works after Trump clinched the Republican nomination for the presidency in the summer of 2016, Cohen admitted last month. | |
| Cohen was also sentenced for tax and bank fraud crimes to which he pleaded guilty in August. | |
| Sentencing guidelines had called for a prison term of four or five years. Last week Trump tweeted that Cohen “should, in my opinion, serve a full and complete sentence”. | |
| Lawyers for Cohen argued for leniency based on his cooperation with prosecutors in a filing last month. But prosecutors in the southern district asked that Cohen be given a “substantial term of imprisonment”, noting that he had not entered a full cooperation agreement with them, which would have required him to testify fully about any and all criminal activity he might know about from his decade inside the Trump Organization or before or after. | Lawyers for Cohen argued for leniency based on his cooperation with prosecutors in a filing last month. But prosecutors in the southern district asked that Cohen be given a “substantial term of imprisonment”, noting that he had not entered a full cooperation agreement with them, which would have required him to testify fully about any and all criminal activity he might know about from his decade inside the Trump Organization or before or after. |
| In a parallel filing, however, special counsel Robert Mueller asked the judge to pay consideration to Cohen’s work with Mueller’s team, the details of which have not fully emerged but which Mueller indicated went to the heart of his investigation of alleged Trump campaign collusion with Russia and possible obstruction of justice by the president. | |
| Jeannie S Rhee, a prosecutor from Mueller’s office, told the judge that Cohen had provided “credible” and “valuable information” about “core Russia issues”. | |
| Rhee did not elaborate. “There’s only so much we can say about the particulars at this time,” she said. | |
| Trump has denied any coordination with Russian operatives during the election and called the Mueller investigation a “witch-hunt”. | Trump has denied any coordination with Russian operatives during the election and called the Mueller investigation a “witch-hunt”. |
| Petrillo argued that Cohen’s high profile had set him up for an aggressive prosecution. “Mr Cohen had the misfortune,” Petrillo said, “to be counsel to the president”. | |
| Michael Cohen | Michael Cohen |
| Trump-Russia investigation | Trump-Russia investigation |
| Donald Trump | Donald Trump |
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