Federal prosecutors in New York said Friday they want to send former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen to prison for a “substantial term” for the campaign finance violations he pleaded guilty to in August.
As a result, Cohen could be facing nearly four years in prison, and the memo noted one recommendation to have him serve 42 months.
That recommendation came Friday afternoon in a 30-plus page sentencing memo filed by federal prosecutors in Manhattan, where Cohen pleaded guilty to eight counts of campaign finance violations. The plea deal, agreed upon by Cohen in August, all but named the president as being part of two hush-money payments Cohen made to women who alleged affairs with Trump.
“The crimes committed by Cohen were more serious than his submission allows and were marked by a pattern of deception that permeated his professional life,” prosecutors said in their lengthy sentencing memo to Judge William H. Pauley III on Friday.
The maximum prison term ranges from 51 to 63 months, but the memo recommended something less than a maximum sentence, and noted that the Probation Department recommended a sentence of 42 months.
For the first time, federal prosecutors in New York acknowledged that Cohen committed campaign finance crimes “in coordination with and at the direction of” Individual 1 — agreed upon to be President Trump.
The prosecutors also downplayed how much Cohen had cooperated with them since his August plea deal, saying he “repeatedly declined to provide full information about the scope of any additional criminal conduct in which he may have engaged or had knowledge.”
The sentencing memo from New York prosecutors originally stems from a case that special counsel Robert Mueller referred to federal prosecutors in New York earlier this year. Federal law enforcement raided Cohen’s hotel room, office, and apartment and seized thousands of documents in April.
Cohen was hit with another sentencing memo on Friday afternoon from Mueller. Last week, Cohen accepted a plea deal with the special counsel and pleaded guilty to lying to Congress in sworn testimony about plans for a Trump Tower project in Moscow.
The special counsel’s office released its own sentencing recommendation to the same judge on Friday afternoon, which praised Cohen for cooperating. Instead, that memo recommended that any sentence related to lying to Congress could be served concurrently to whatever sentence he gets in the first case.
Cohen “has gone to significant lengths to assist the special counsel’s investigation,” the special counsel said, and that the information he provided was “credible and consistent with other evidence.”
In that sentencing memo, Mueller revealed that Cohen corrected other false statements he made regarding his contacts with Russian officials during the 2016 campaign, including one about a possible meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The document cites a radio interview Cohen gave in September 2015, after Trump announced his candidacy, during which Cohen suggested Trump meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in New York City during the United Nations General Assembly.
Cohen initially said he discussed his comments with neither the Trump campaign nor the Trump Organization. However, he later admitted that this was false, as he had talked with Trump about contacting the Russian government to gauge its interest in a meeting.
Such a meeting, however, did not take place.
Mueller said Cohen also provided the special counsel’s office with information regarding “attempts by other Russian nationals to reach the [Trump] campaign” as early as November 2015.
Then, Cohen spoke with a Russian national who said they were a “trusted person” in Russia “who could offer the campaign ‘political synergy’ and ‘synergy on a government level,’” according to the court filing.
This person, according to the sentencing memo, “repeatedly” promised a meeting between Trump and Putin, and said such a gathering could have a “‘phenomenal’ impact ‘not only in political but in a business dimension as well,’” a reference to the Trump-branded tower in Moscow.
The special counsel’s office said Cohen didn’t follow up on the invitation.
Mueller characterizes the real estate project in Moscow as a “lucrative business opportunity” that required the help of the Russian government.
If the Trump-branded tower was finished, it would’ve been a boon for the Trump Organization, according to Mueller’s memo, resulting in “hundreds of millions of dollars from Russian sources in licensing fees and other venues.”
Cohen initially told congressional investigators consideration of the Moscow project ended in January 2016. However, such discussions continued as late as June 2016, after Trump clinched the Republican presidential nomination.
During his discussions with Mueller’s prosecutors, he provided them with “useful information concerning certain discrete Russia-related matters core to its investigation that he obtained by virtue of his regular contact with [Trump Organization] executive during the campaign,” the memo from the special counsel’s office said.
Mueller’s team characterizes Cohen’s crimes as “serious” and said a sentence should “reflect the fact that lying to federal investigators has real consequences, especially where the defendant lied to investigators about critical facts, in an investigation of national importance.
However, the special counsel said Cohen made “substantial and significant efforts to remediate his misconduct, accept responsibility for his actions, and assist the SCO’s investigation.”
