President Trump has just responded to Michael Cohen, his former lawyer, being sentenced to prison for three years.
Cohen heads to the slammer
Yesterday, Cohen, Trump’s former fixer and legal representative, was found guilty of tax evasion, lying to Congress, and other crimes. He was sentenced to three years in prison. (RELATED: Michael Cohen Sentenced to 3 Years in Prison.)
BREAKING: Ex-Trump lawyer Cohen gets 3 years in prison for crimes including hush-money payments that prosecutors say Trump ordered.
— The Associated Press (@AP) December 12, 2018
Cohen’s sentence comes at the end of an investigation led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller as it relates to Russian collusion in the 2016 election.
Nothing in Cohen’s criminal sentence has anything at all to do with Russian-Trump campaign collusion, other than Cohen’s lying to Congress about the timetable in which a Moscow Trump Tower deal was being negotiated. The Trump Tower was never built, and no plan was ever agreed to. However, Cohen lied to Congress and testified that talk of such a building hadn’t continued into 2016, when it had.
Part of Cohen’s sentencing was also related to payments he made on behalf of Trump to cover up an alleged affair he had during the presidential campaign. These payments, which, in the murky area of campaign finance law, can sometimes be seen as a campaign contribution, were never recorded as such, thus violating the law.
During the sentencing hearing, Cohen turned on his former boss, saying he was tricked into being unfailingly loyal:
Michael Cohen said he had been “living in personal and mental incarceration ever since I agreed to work for a business mogul.”
It was “blind loyalty to this man,” he said, referring to Trump, “that led me to choose a path of darkness, not light.” https://t.co/SEWTkcMr8z
— NPR Politics (@nprpolitics) December 12, 2018
Trump responds to Cohen’s sentence
That comment was enough to set off President Trump, who responded in kind over Twitter:
I never directed Michael Cohen to break the law. He was a lawyer and he is supposed to know the law. It is called “advice of counsel,” and a lawyer has great liability if a mistake is made. That is why they get paid. Despite that many campaign finance lawyers have strongly……
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 13, 2018
….stated that I did nothing wrong with respect to campaign finance laws, if they even apply, because this was not campaign finance. Cohen was guilty on many charges unrelated to me, but he plead to two campaign charges which were not criminal and of which he probably was not…
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 13, 2018
….guilty even on a civil basis. Those charges were just agreed to by him in order to embarrass the president and get a much reduced prison sentence, which he did-including the fact that his family was temporarily let off the hook. As a lawyer, Michael has great liability to me!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 13, 2018
Trump’s rash response
Let’s hope Trump cleared his statement with his legal team before issuing them. These kinds of issues are fraught, especially with the ongoing Special Counsel investigation.
It’s not clear whether Trump broke the law in the case of the financial payment. Legal expert Dan Backer says Trump is in no way in the wrong here. He writes,
The bottom line remains this: Trump did not violate federal campaign finance laws. Why? Because the payments to Daniels and McDougal amounted to a “private transaction,” as the president himself acknowledged, for a purpose he believed to be unrelated to politics.
The president is correct that the payments had nothing to do with politics, and everything to do with brand management.
President Trump seems to agree with that sentiment, hence his lashing out. Unfortunately, the court didn’t see it that way, and it appears that Cohen is paying for it.
