Michael Cohen goes from Trump's fixer to the first Trump aide to get substantial prison sentence
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On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge William Pauley sentenced Michael Cohen to 36 months in a federal penitentiary for a total of nine crimes including bank fraud, tax evasion, lying to Congress, and two instances of campaign funding violations conducted at tMichael Cohen goes from Trump's fixer to the first Trump aide to get substantial prison sentence
On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge William Pauley sentenced Michael Cohen to 36 months in a federal penitentiary for a total of nine crimes including bank fraud, tax evasion, lying to Congress, and two instances of campaign funding violations conducted at the direction of Donald Trump. Cohen has until March 6 to surrender himself to authorities and begin serving his sentence. The campaign finance violations were carried out under supervision and direction from Donald Trump, in order to suppress the stories of two women with whom Trump had affairs from reaching the public in advance of the 2016 election. These were not “civil” matters as Trump has maintained, but felony violations of federal law intended, according to US attorneys for the Southern District of New York, to deceive the public and defy the “transparency” required of campaigns. The lying to Congress charge was also directly related to Trump. In appearances before both the Senate and House, Cohen maintained that Trump had ended efforts to execute a real estate deal with Russia before beginning his campaign for the White House. That was not true. Cohen and Trump associated Felix Sater coordinated with a variety of Russian oligarchs and officials on an effort that continued until at least the summer of 2016. During this period, Trump was involved and aware of the ongoing effort, as were Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump. The SDNY argued that, though Cohen cooperated with them on some issues, his cooperation came late, after it was clear he was going to be convicted, and was never complete. In fact, Cohen and his attorneys continued to argue that he could not say everything he knew out of concerns for his family. However, most of this seemed to be related to Cohen’s testimony related to organized criminal organizations other than the Trump Organization. Cohen left the court without speaking, but attorney Lanny Davis did make a statement. Davis: After Mr. Mueller completes his investigation and issues his final report, I look forward to assisting Michael to state publicly all he knows about Mr. Trump. xThis tweet may have aged more poorly than any tweet in human history pic.twitter.com/dojbUoVWpz— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 12, 2018 Read more