Michael Cohen pleads guilty and implicates Donald Trump
The stories that matter on money and politics in the race for the White House
Donald Trump is facing the most serious legal crisis of his presidency after his long-time lawyer pleaded guilty to arranging payments “at the direction” of his former boss during the 2016 campaign to silence two women who alleged they had affairs with Mr Trump.
Michael Cohen, a lawyer who once said he would “take a bullet” for the president, pleaded guilty to violating campaign finance laws by arranging payments on behalf of Mr Trump to Stormy Daniels, a porn star, and Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model who sold her story to the National Enquirer, a tabloid newspaper.
The development in federal court in New York came on the same afternoon as a Virginia jury convicted Paul Manafort, Mr Trump’s former campaign manager, of tax evasion and bank fraud. Mr Manafort was convicted on eight counts, the same number of charges to which Mr Cohen pleaded guilty, but the judge declared a mistrial on 10 other counts after the jury was unable to reach a unanimous verdict.
While there has been intense focus on the Manafort trial because the charges were brought by Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign, the Cohen plea was the first time that Mr Trump had been accused of wrongdoing by a member of his inner circle.
Lanny Davis, a lawyer representing Mr Cohen, said his client had opted “to put his family and country first and tell the truth about Donald Trump”.
“Today, he stood up and testified under oath that Donald Trump directed him to commit a crime by making payments to two women for the principal purpose of influencing an election,” Mr Davis said. “If those payments were a crime for Michael Cohen, then why wouldn’t they be a crime for Donald Trump?”
As Mr Cohen left the Manhattan court where his plea was entered, he was met with shouts of “Lock him up” — an ironic play on the “Lock her up” chants Trump supporters levelled at Hillary Clinton in 2016. It was a surreal moment for the former Trump confidante, who has described himself as a “pit bull” and was known to some friends as “Fido” because of his aggressive defence of the president.
His sentencing has been set for December 12 under a plea agreement with prosecutors, which calls for a sentence of between 46 and 63 months in prison. Bail was set at $500,000.
Mr Trump has denied that he had affairs with the women. He has also denied knowing about the $130,000 payment Mr Cohen made to Ms Daniels, which was the basis for one of the eight charges. His claim has been undermined by Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor serving as a lawyer for the president, who has said Mr Trump reimbursed Mr Cohen for the payment to Ms Daniels, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford.
David Gergen, a former adviser to four presidents, said the Cohen plea was “more dangerous” for Mr Trump because “it brings him into the net more fully”.
Mr Gergen said the day reminded him of the time when John Dean — the Nixon administration White House counsel who secretly co-operated with Watergate investigators — told Richard Nixon there was a “cancer” on his presidency.
“With this double blow, it looks much like a cancer on this presidency,” Mr Gergen said. “Trump can still manage it, but if it metastasises, he is in deep trouble.” He added that the Cohen plea would increase pressure on the president to agree to sit down for an interview with Mr Mueller and his investigators.
In addition to admitting that he paid Ms Daniels at the behest of Mr Trump — referred to in a criminal complaint as “the candidate” — Mr Cohen said he had helped arrange a payment to a tabloid that had bought the rights to Ms McDougal’s story, in an arrangement commonly known as “catch and kill”.
While the tabloid was not named in the complaint, it was clear from the details that it was the National Enquirer, which is owned by American Media Inc, whose chairman David Pecker is a friend of Mr Trump.
“Michael Cohen . . . caused and made the payments described . . . in order to influence the 2016 presidential election,” said the complaint filed by the federal prosecutors in Manhattan. “As a result of the payments solicited and made by Michael Cohen . . . neither Woman-1 nor Woman-2 spoke to the press prior to the election.”
Lisa Kern Griffin, a law professor at Duke University, said Mr Cohen’s testimony that he had “committed campaign finance violations in co-ordination with and at the direction of the president . . . brings the president perilously close to being an unindicted co-conspirator engaged in criminal wrongdoing”.
She added that “whether or not the Cohen plea ultimately adds to the president’s legal jeopardy, it should be damaging politically”.
Justice department guidance suggests that a sitting president cannot be indicted, but that view has not been tested.
Mitchell Epner, a former federal prosecutor now at law firm Rottenberg Lipman Rich, said the statute of limitations for the campaign finance law violations would expire in the summer of 2021. “If Donald Trump has left office by then, either because he has resigned or been impeached or not won re-election, he would face real criminal exposure of being indicted on those charges up until the summer of 2021.”
Mr Trump faces significant potential political problems in Congress. Some Democrats have called on their party leadership to initiate impeachment proceedings against Mr Trump if they win the House of Representatives in the November midterm elections.
Outlining Mr Trump’s campaign travel plans on Tuesday, White House officials stressed that he would be more aggressive than any of his predecessors in campaigning for Republican candidates.
“We are fighting history,” said one official, adding that the party holding the presidency had lost seats in the first midterm elections on every occasion since the American civil war, except Franklin Roosevelt in 1938 and George W Bush in 2002.
Follow Demetri Sevastopulo on Twitter: @dimi
Comments