"He provided no legal services for the year 2017 and it was simply a means to obtain reimbursement for the unlawful campaign contributions,” Khuzami said. Khuzami said Cohen worked to silence the women whose stories would be "detrimental to the 2016 campaign." Cohen then sought reimbursement for the payments in 2017 by writing invoices for legal services to Trump's company.
The 51-year-old Cohen said in court that he made the payments in coordination with Trump, who wasn't named, to influence the election. Prosecutors said Cohen arranged a separate payment to Stormy Daniels, referred to as Woman-2, to prevent her from speaking to the press.
Prosecutors said the purpose of the agreement, in which Cohen participated, "was to suppress Woman-1’s story so as to prevent it from influencing the election." In one instance, prosecutors said "Corporation-1" - whose description matches public descriptions of the National Enquirer, entered into an agreement in August 2016 to buy the story of one woman, Karen McDougal, identified as "Woman-1," for $150,000. Both, prosecutors charged, had been "coordinated" with Trump's campaign, and both violated federal campaign finance laws.Ĭourt records don't include the names of the women or the other participants in the scheme, but in most cases, their identities were obvious based on months of disclosures about the investigation into Cohen and the women's separate lawsuits. Two of the charges against Cohen center on payments during Trump's 2016 campaign to women who'd alleged they'd had affairs with Trump years earlier. View Gallery: Michael Cohen: Trump's former personal lawyer in the spotlight Trump's suspected involvement "These are very serious charges and reflect a pattern of lies and dishonesty over an extended period of time," Khuzami said. Attorney Robert Khuzami said Cohen decided, as a lawyer, that he was above the law and would pay a "very, very serious price" for his actions. The Justice Department alleged that Cohen paid to silence the actress and another woman, a former Playboy playmate, "in order to influence the 2016 presidential election." And prosecutors charged that the payments were "coordinated with one or more members of the campaign, including through meetings and phone calls about the fact, nature, and timing of the payments."Ĭohen pleaded guilty to eight charges, including allegations that the payments violated campaign finance laws and unrelated charges that he lied to banks to obtain improper loans and lied to the government to avoid paying taxes.ĭeputy U.S.
The payment came at a particularly sensitive moment, after the release of an Access Hollywood outtake in which Trump boasted about sexually assaulting women and less than a month before the election that carried Trump to the White House. He said the payment was intended to keep her from talking about an affair she said she had with the billionaire in 2006. NEW YORK - President Donald Trump’s onetime attorney and personal fixer, Michael Cohen, told a federal court on Tuesday that he had paid off two women to silence them before the 2016 election at Trump’s "direction," and admitted that the payments were illegal.Ĭohen admitted he paid an adult film star hush money "at the direction of" a candidate running for federal office, a reference to Trump. The mistake happened when a USA TODAY editor noted the Times’ information in an email on deadline and another editor mistook the text to be from USA TODAY and inserted it into the story. Watch Video: Michael Cohen pleads guilty to campaign finance violations, implicates TrumpĮditor’s note: An early version of this story mistakenly contained a paragraph copied and pasted from a New York Times story.
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