Thread: Michael Cohen admits violating campaign finance laws 'at direction of' Trump

3 hours ago

Michael Cohen admits violating campaign finance laws 'at direction of' Trump

By Samuel Chamberlain, Adam Shaw, John Roberts | Fox News



Michael Cohen pleads guilty to campaign-finance violations

President Trump's former attorney Michael Cohen pleads guilty to charges including campaign finance fraud; Ed Henry reports.

Michael Cohen, President Trump's longtime personal attorney, admitted Tuesday to violating federal campaign finance laws by arranging hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal "at the direction" of then-candidate Trump.

In entering the plea, Cohen did not specifically name the two women or even Trump, recounting instead that he worked with an "unnamed candidate." But the amounts and the dates all lined up with the payments made to Daniels and McDougal.

In total, Cohen pleaded guilty to five counts of tax evasion, one count of making false statements to a financial institution, one count of willfully causing an unlawful corporate contribution, and one count of making an excessive campaign contribution.

Cohen could have received up to 65 years in prison if convicted of all charges. However, as part of his plea deal, Cohen agreed not to challenge any sentence between 46 and 63 months. The deal does not involve a cooperation agreement with federal prosecutors.

Cohen is set to be sentenced Dec. 12.

Cohen’s home, office and hotel room were raided in April by federal investigators looking into his financial dealings, including his alleged practice of paying women to stay silent about claims they had affairs with now-President Trump.

Daniels and McDougal have both claimed they had sex with Trump while he was married, which the president denies.
Cohen was behind the $130,000 payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels, and recently released a tape of a conversation from September 2016 of him and Trump discussing the possible payment to McDougal.

Trump denied to reporters in April that he knew anything about Cohen's payments to Daniels, though the explanation from the president and his attorney Rudy Giuliani have shifted multiples times since.




In May, Giuliani initially told Fox News' Sean Hannity that Trump had reimbursed Cohen for the payment to Daniels.

Giuliani later claimed that the president was unaware the money would be going to Daniels and said Trump repaid Cohen for unspecified "expenses."

Deputy U.S. Attorney Robert Khuzami told reporters that in January 2017, Cohen had sought reimbursement for the payments to both women by "submitting invoices to the candidate's company" -- believed to be the Trump Organization -- that falsely indicated that Cohen had provided legal services in the year 2017.

"In fact ... [Cohen] provided no legal services for the year 2017, and it was simply a means to obtain reimbursement for the unlawful campaign contribution," Khuzami said.

Donald J. Trump

✔@realDonaldTrump

Inconceivable that the government would break into a lawyer’s office (early in the morning) - almost unheard of. Even more inconceivable that a lawyer would tape a client - totally unheard of & perhaps illegal. The good news is that your favorite President did nothing wrong!

5:10 AM - Jul 21, 2018

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The Wall Street Journal reported in November 2016 that McDougal was paid $150,000 by American Media Inc. -- the parent company to the National Enquirer -- for the rights to the story, but it never ran.

According to court documents, Cohen reached an agreement with American Media Chairman and CEO David Pecker to pay $125,000 for "the rights to the non-disclosure portion" of McDougal's agreement with American Media. Prosecutors say Cohen created a shell entity, "Resolution Consultants LLC" to use in the transaction.

An agreement was signed, but according to prosecutors, Pecker contacted Cohen in early October 2016 and told him "that the deal was off and that Cohen should tear up the assignment agreement." The document says Cohen did not do so and the agreement was found during the April search of his office.

Cohen also admitted Tuesday to underreporting his income by $4.1 million on his tax returns for the years between 2012 and 2016. Of that amount, $2.5 million was interest payments from a personal loan; $1.3 million was income from his taxi medallion business; $100,000 was income from brokerage commissions; and $200,000 was from "consulting fees."

The investigation into Cohen was handled by prosecutors in the Southern District of New York after it was referred to them by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office.

Trump has repeatedly blasted developments in the Cohen investigation. In April, after Cohen’s offices were raided, he declared “attorney-client privilege is dead.” Last month, he slammed both the FBI raid and Cohen’s taping of discussions about paying McDougal as “inconceivable.”

“Inconceivable that the government would break into a lawyer’s office (early in the morning) - almost unheard of,” he tweeted. “Even more inconceivable that a lawyer would tape a client - totally unheard of & perhaps illegal.”

But, possibly in reference to questions about whether he had violated any campaign finance laws, Trump added that “your favorite President did nothing wrong!”

Cohen, who had been fiercely loyal to Trump, last month appeared to distance himself from Trump. He told ABC News that "my wife, my daughter and my son have my first loyalty and always will. I put family and country first."

Before the election, Cohen had been a trusted member of the Trump organization, working out of an office in Trump Tower next to one used by his boss.

He raised millions for Trump's campaign and, after being interviewed by the House Intelligence Committee last year, told Vanity Fair that Trump had no part in the suspected Russian conspiracy to tamper with the election.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018...ion-trump.html

The worst hour of Trump's presidency

Disgusting Witch Hunt. I feel very badly for Michael Cohen. He didn't deserve this at all.

Trump Attacks Michael Cohen, Accuses Him of Fabricating Testimony


Tweet comes morning after president’s ex-attorney implicated him in guilty plea to campaign-finance charge

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-a...yer-1534943248

Trump's response to Cohen's plea deal, dissected


ANALYSIS
The President knows his ex-attorney's deal is a problem for him. He also knows one tactic when he's cornered.



Trump's response to Michael Cohen's plea deal, dissected

Analysis by Chris Cillizza, CNN Editor-at-large
Updated 7:59 PM ET, Wed August 22, 2018

(CNN)On Wednesday afternoon, Fox News released a snippet of its interview with President Donald Trump. (The interview is set to run in its entirety on Thursday morning).

Here's the exchange between Fox's Ainsley Earhardt and Trump on whether he knew about payments arranged by his one-time lawyer Michael Cohen to women alleging affairs with Trump in the run-up to the 2016 election:

Earhardt: "Did you know about the payments?"
Trump: "Later on I knew. Later on. But you have to understand, Ainsley, what he did -- and they weren't taken out of campaign finance, that's the big thing. That's a much bigger thing. Did they come out of the campaign? They didn't come out of the campaign, they came from me. And I tweeted about it. You know, I put -- I don't know if you know but I tweeted about the payments. But they didn't come out of campaign. In fact, my first question when I heard about it was did they come out of the campaign because that could be a little dicey. And they didn't come out of the campaign and that's big. But they weren't -- that's not a -- it's not even a campaign violation. If you look at President Obama, he had a massive campaign violation but he had a different attorney general and they viewed it a lot differently."
There's so much wrong here. Let's go through it point by point.

1. Trump says he knew about the payments -- $130,000 to porn star Stormy Daniels, $150,000 from American Media Inc. to ex-Playboy model Karen McDougal -- "later on." That runs directly counter to what Trump said in April when asked about the Cohen payment to Daniels. Here's that exchange:

Reporter: "Did you know about the $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels?"
Trump: "No."

Reporter: "Then why did Michael Cohen make [the payment], if there was no truth to her allegations?"
Trump: "You'll have to ask Michael Cohen. Michael's my attorney, and you'll have to ask Michael."

Reporter: "Do you know where he got the money to make that payment?"
Trump: "No I don't know."
Trump's latest statement also contradicts the audio tape released by Cohen last month that contains an apparent September 2016 conversation between Trump and his one-time lawyer in which a payment to David Pecker -- the head of AMI, the National Enquirer's parent company -- is discussed. That payment was to buy the rights to McDougal's story, which Pecker, a longtime Trump friend, had purchased but refused to run. (Trump never bought the story.)

If you can't figure out how all of these statements can be true, I'll solve it for you: They can't.

2. Trump is trying to draw some sort of distinction between paying the hush money out of campaign funds and paying them out of his own pocket. But, either way, it's illegal.

Assuming Trump used his personal money to repay Cohen -- and remember both Trump and Cohen have insisted in the past that none of the money came from Trump, which is, of course, not true -- then he was making an illegal loan to his campaign. You can't dole out tens of thousands of dollars for the express purpose of silencing people with damaging allegations right before voters vote -- and then never report it.

(Here's the Federal Election Commission's guidance governing loans by a candidate to his or her campaign.)

3. The comparison to Obama's fine by the FEC is a total and complete straw man. It is true that Obama's campaign was fined a hefty $375,000 by the FEC in 2013 for failure to file 48-hour contribution reports -- donations made within the final weeks of a campaign -- that totaled $1.3 million. The oversight was discovered in an audit of the Obama campaign.
Compare that fine to what is alleged here: A candidate for president directed the end-run of campaign finance laws in hopes of suppressing allegations made by women about romantic dalliances. He did so, according to Cohen, with the express purpose of influencing the election. That's not even in the same universe as a candidate's campaign being fined for not correctly reporting $1.3 million in donations from the final days of an election.

The Point: Trump, at some level deep down, knows that Cohen's plea deal -- specifically as it relates to the hush money payoffs -- is a big, big problem for him. But he also knows one tactic when backed into a corner: Fight like hell with whatever you can lay your hands on. That's what this response to Fox News amounts to. Unfortunately for Trump, none of these punches land. In fact, he whiffs badly on them all.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/22/politics/donald-trump-michael-cohen-fox-news/index.html

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