A federal judge in Manhattan on Wednesday sentenced President Donald Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen to three years in prison for his role in a hush-money scandal ahead of the 2016 presidential election.
Lawyers for Cohen, 52, had argued that he should serve no jail time since his actions reflected “fierce loyalty” to Trump. But federal District Court Judge William H. Pauley III saw it differently.
Cohen was ordered by the judge to report to prison on March 6. He will also have to pay a forfeiture of $500,000, restitution of $1.4 million and a fine of $50,000.
Cohen apologized Wednesday and said he took “full responsibility for each act that I plead guilty to: the personal ones to me and those involving the President of the United States of America.”
“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,” said Cohen in court.
The sentencing was a culmination of Cohen pleading guilty to charges brought against him in two separate cases this year. One case was filed in August by federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, and another was filed in November by special counsel Robert Mueller’s office, also in New York.
In New York in August, Cohen pleaded guilty to eight charges of bank and tax fraud, as well as campaign finance violations. For those violations, he will serve 36 months.
Mueller’s office last month charged him in a separate case with lying to Congress, and he will serve two months for pleading guilty to that single count. Cohen will serve the sentences concurrently.
Cohen’s sentence of three years is the longest handed out yet related to Mueller’s ongoing investigation.
Federal sentencing guidelines in the New York case had called for Cohen to face roughly five years behind bars, and Mueller’s prosecutors then recommended he should not serve any additional prison time beyond the sentence. The U.S. probation office recommended a sentence of three-and-a-half years.
In court Wednesday, Guy Petrillo, an attorney for Cohen, said that his client came forward to help the Mueller to help the probe. “He knew the president might shut down the investigation,” Petrillo said.
Cohen “came forward to offer evidence against the most powerful person in our country,” said Petrillo. “The special counsel investigation is of utmost national significance, no less than seen 40 years ago in Watergate.”
Cohen called the sentencing “one of the most meaningful days of his life.”
“This may seem hard to believe,” Cohen told the court, “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.”
In a Friday memo, New York prosecutors advocated for a “substantial term of imprisonment” due what they called Cohen’s only limited cooperation and refusal to be completely forthcoming. His crimes, they said were “marked by a pattern of deception that permeated his professional life.”
However, Mueller’s office said Cohen had “gone to significant lengths” to assist them in their Russia investigation and provided “relevant information” about his contacts in 2017-18 with people in Tump’s orbit.
Speaking in court, Petrillo denied that Cohen declined to answer any questions from both federal prosecutors and Congress.
“He’s wary of a long-term cooperation agreement for personal reasons and because he wants both to remove himself and remove his family from the glare of the cameras,” explained Cohen’s attorney.
On Aug. 21, Cohen pleaded guilty to eight charges of campaign finance violations, tax evasion and making false statements to a financial institution — and in doing so, implicated Trump.
In court at the time, Cohen admitted he arranged the payments to two women who alleged years-old affairs with Trump “for the principal purpose of influencing the election” in 2016.
Prosecutors in New York wrote last Friday to Pauley that Cohen, in arranging the payments, “acted in coordination with and at the direction” of Trump, whom they referred to as Individual 1.
The payments Cohen made included $130,000 in October 2016 to adult film actress Stormy Daniels, which the federal government said was an illegal donation to Trump’s campaign, since it was paid with the intention to improve Trump’s election odds. The legal limit for individual contributions is $2,700 in a general election.
Cohen admitting to arranging for an illegal corporate donation to be made to the then-candidate when he arranged a $150,000 payment by American Media Inc. to former Playboy model Karen McDougal in August 2016.
Trump at first denied knowing anything about the payments, but has since then acknowledged them. But this week, in a pair of tweets, Trump insisted the payments were “a simple private transaction” — and was not a violation of federal election regulations, but a civil offense that was Cohen’s fault.
“In committing these crimes, Mr. Cohen has eroded faith in the electoral process and compromised the rule of law,” said Nicholas Roos, a prosecutor from the Southern District of New York in court on Wednesday.
Then, on Nov. 29, Cohen pleaded guilty to one charge of lying to Congress about his communications both with Trump officials and Russian officials ahead of the 2016 election regarding the building of a Trump Tower in Moscow. The charge was brought against Cohen by Mueller, who, since May 2017, has been investigation Russian election interference and possible collusion with the Trump campaign.
In Mueller’s sentencing memo on Friday, the special counsel revealed that Cohen provided them with information regarding “attempts by other Russian nationals to reach the [Trump] campaign” as early as November 2015.
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.
Jeannie Rhee, a prosecutor with Mueller’s office, was tightlipped on Wednesday, saying that Cohen provided “credible” and “valuable information” about “any links between a campaign and a foreign government.”
“Mr. Cohen sought to tell us the truth,” Rhee said.
In typical special counsel fashion, Rhee was tight-lipped in her short remarks, but said, “There’s only so much we can say about the particulars at this time, given our ongoing investigation.”
Trump distanced himself from Cohen immediately after the November plea deal with Mueller, calling him a “weak person” who simply took a plea deal to get a more lenient sentence.
Last week, Trump tweeted that Cohen “lied for this outcome and should, in my opinion, serve a full and complete sentence.”
