Michael Cohen Says He Arranged Payments to Women at Trump’s Direction
Michael Cohen Says He Arranged Payments to Women at Trump’s Direction
Michael D. Cohen, President Trump’s former fixer, made the extraordinary admission in court on Tuesday that Mr. Trump had directed him to arrange payments to two women during the 2016 campaign to keep them from speaking publicly about affairs they said they had with Mr. Trump.
Mr. Cohen acknowledged the illegal payments while pleading guilty to breaking campaign finance laws and other charges. He told a judge in United States District Court in Manhattan that the payments to the women were made “in coordination with and at the direction of a candidate for federal office.”
“I participated in this conduct, which on my part took place in Manhattan, for the principal purpose of influencing the election” for president in 2016, Mr. Cohen said.
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Mr. Cohen also pleaded guilty to multiple counts of tax evasion and bank fraud, bringing to a close a monthslong investigation by Manhattan federal prosecutors who examined his personal business dealings and his role in helping to arrange financial deals with women connected to Mr. Trump.
The plea came shortly before another blow to the president: his former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, was convicted in his financial fraud trial in Virginia. The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, had built a case that Mr. Manafort hid millions of dollars in foreign accounts to evade taxes and lied to banks to obtain $20 million in loans.
The guilty plea and Mr. Cohen’s statements in court represent a pivotal moment in the investigation into the president: a once-loyal aide admitting that he made payments at the behest of Mr. Trump to shield him from politically damaging disclosures.
Mr. Trump’s lawyers have, for months, said privately that they considered Mr. Cohen’s case to be potentially more problematic for the president than the investigation by the special counsel.
But Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, said in a statement after Mr. Cohen’s plea, “There is no allegation of any wrongdoing against the president in the government’s charges against Mr. Cohen.”
In federal court in Manhattan, Mr. Cohen made the admission about Mr. Trump’s role in the payments to the women — an adult film actress and a former Playboy playmate — as he pleaded guilty to two campaign finance crimes.
One of those charges stemmed from a $130,000 payment he made to the actress, Stephanie Clifford, better known as Stormy Daniels, in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election. The other concerned a complicated arrangement in which a tabloid bought the rights to the story about the former Playboy model, Karen McDougal, then killed it.
The plea agreement does not call for Mr. Cohen to cooperate with federal prosecutors in Manhattan. Still, it does not preclude him from providing information to the special counsel, who is examining the Trump campaign’s possible involvement in Russia’s interference in the 2016 campaign. If Mr. Cohen were to substantially assist the special counsel’s investigation, Mr. Mueller could recommend a reduction in his sentence.
Mr. Cohen had been the president’s longtime fixer, handling his most sensitive business and personal matters. He once said he would take a bullet for Mr. Trump.
As Mr. Cohen addressed the judge, admitting to the crimes he had committed, the packed courtroom remained silent. Even when Mr. Cohen made obvious references to Mr. Trump, referring to him as “the candidate” and “a candidate for federal office,” spectators seemed to listen raptly, with no gasps or audible reactions.
Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty to five counts of tax evasion for concealing more than $4 million in personal income from 2012 to 2016 and to one count of bank fraud, for making false statements to a financial institution in connection with a series of loans. He also pleaded guilty to making an excessive campaign contribution and causing an unlawful corporate contribution during the 2016 election cycle.
He will be sentenced on Dec. 12 before Judge William H. Pauley III. Though he faces up to 65 years on all eight counts, the sentencing guidelines suggest he will receive far less time.
The charges against Mr. Cohen were not a surprise, but he had signaled recently he might be willing to cooperate with investigators who for months have been conducting an extensive investigation of his personal business dealings.
Indeed, his guilty plea comes slightly more than a month after he gave an interview to George Stephanopoulos on ABC News and said he would put “his family and country first” if prosecutors offered him leniency in exchange for incriminating information on Mr. Trump.
In July, in what appeared to be another public break with Mr. Trump, one of Mr. Cohen’s lawyers, Lanny J. Davis, released a secret audio recording that Mr. Cohen had made of the president in which it seems that Mr. Trump admits knowledge of a payment made to Ms. McDougal, the model who said she had an affair with him.
As part of their investigation, prosecutors had been looking into whether Mr. Cohen violated any campaign-finance laws by making the $130,000 payment to Ms. Clifford in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election.
Mr. Cohen’s plea culminates a long-running inquiry that became publicly known in April when F.B.I. agents armed with search warrants raided his office, apartment and hotel room, hauling away reams of documents, including pieces of paper salvaged from a shredder, and millions of electronic files contained on a series of cellphones, iPads and computers.
Lawyers for Mr. Cohen and Mr. Trump spent the next four months working with a court-appointed special master to review the documents and data files to determine whether any of the materials were subject to attorney-client privilege and should not be made available to the government.
The special master, Barbara S. Jones, who completed her review last week, issued a series of reports in recent months, finding that only a fraction of the materials were privileged and the rest could be provided to prosecutors for their investigation.
On Monday, the judge overseeing the review, Kimba M. Wood of Federal District Court in Manhattan, issued an order adopting Ms. Jones’s findings and ending the review process.
It was unclear on Tuesday what role the materials that Ms. Jones reviewed, which were made available to prosecutors on a rolling basis, may have had in the charges against Mr. Cohen.
One collateral effect of Mr. Cohen’s plea agreement is that it may allow Michael Avenatti, Ms. Clifford’s lawyer, to proceed with a deposition of Mr. Trump in a lawsuit that Ms. Clifford filed accusing the president of breaking a nondisclosure agreement concerning their affair.
The lawsuit had been stayed by a judge pending the resolution of Mr. Cohen’s criminal case. Mr. Avenatti wrote on Twitter on Tuesday that he would now seek to force Mr. Trump to testify “under oath about what he knew, when he knew it and what he did about it.”
The bank fraud charge stems from a series of loans Mr. Cohen obtained or sought to obtain between 2010 and 2015.
Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty to making false statements to a bank about his net worth and failing to disclose several different loans, some of which were collateralized by taxi medallions.
One element of the charge relates to a series of loans for more than $20 million made by two financial institutions, Sterling National Bank and the Melrose Credit Union, in 2014.
Publicly filed financing statements showed that the 2014 loans were secured by 32 taxi medallions owned by Mr. Cohen and his family. The medallions were then valued at more than $1 million each, and generated a total of more than $1 million a year in income.
Sixteen separate companies controlled by Mr. Cohen and his family received the loans. Each company owned two taxi medallions. Mr. Cohen and his wife also personally guaranteed the loans, according to the filings.
