An associate and former personal attorney to President Donald Trump of the US, Michael Cohen was on Wednesday sentenced to 3 years in prison for various crimes including campaign finance violation, tax evasion, and lying to Congress.
Before ruling was issued, Cohen had pleaded for leniency, accusing President Trump – his former boss – of causing him to “follow a path of darkness rather than light” and “cover up his dirty deeds.” Cohen’s attorney, Guy Petrillo, argued that Cohen “came forward to offer evidence against the most powerful person in the country.”
With the pounding of his gavel, Judge William Pauley marked the conclusion of Cohen’s improbable journey from Trump’s legal counsel to perhaps the most potent vehicle for President Trump’s legal exposure.
In addition to his imprisonment, Cohen will have to pay $1.39 million in restitution plus $500,000 in forfeiture for the financial and campaign finance crimes. He will face an additional fine of $50,000 for lying to Congress.
Federal prosecutors allege that Cohen violated campaign finance laws by paying off two women who allege to have had affairs with Donald Trump acting “in coordination with and at the direction of” the then-candidate. Trump has argued the payments amount to nothing more than a “simple private transaction,” and do not qualify as campaign finance violations.
For more than a decade, Cohen stood by Trump’s side as a personal attorney, fixer and confidant, famously proclaiming that he would “take a bullet for the president” and “never walk away.”
But over the past year, as investigators targeted his personal finances, Cohen flipped on his former boss and cooperated in multiple investigations, including Mueller’s probe, targeting Trump’s campaign and family business operations.
Prosecutors in the Justice Department’s Southern District of New York charged Cohen with eight felony counts in August, including tax evasion, making false statements to a financial institution, and campaign finance violations.
Special counsel Robert Mueller, tasked with investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, tacked on an additional count of lying to Congress last month. Cohen pleaded guilty to all nine counts and struck a deal to cooperate with ongoing investigations.