Cohen Sentenced To 3 Years In Prison Fueling Trump's Impeachment Concerns

(@ChaudhryMAli88)

 Cohen Sentenced to 3 Years in Prison Fueling Trump's Impeachment Concerns

Michael Cohen, US President Donald Trump's ex-lawyer, was sentenced to three years in prison after pleading guilty to the 2016 election campaign finance violations, which reportedly resulted in the US president being worried about the possibility of impeachment proceedings against him

NEW YORK (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 13th December, 2018) Michael Cohen, US President Donald Trump's ex-lawyer, was sentenced to three years in prison after pleading guilty to the 2016 election campaign finance violations, which reportedly resulted in the US president being worried about the possibility of impeachment proceedings against him.

In August, Cohen pleaded guilty to eight charges, including tax fraud and campaign finance violations. In November, the lawyer reached a plea deal with US federal prosecutors requiring him to cooperate with Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team on the investigation into the alleged collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign during the 2016 presidential election. Last week, prosecutors recommended that Cohen be sentenced to 51 to 63 months.

In a ruling on Wednesday, US District Judge William Pauley sentenced Cohen to 36 months in prison for hush payments to two women during the 2016 US presidential campaign, as well as for tax evasion and lying to the US Congress about talks with Russian officials on the construction of a Trump Tower in Russia, according to a Sputnik correspondent reporting from the court.

After the three-year imprisonment, the former Trump lawyer will be under supervised release for another three years. The judge also sentenced Cohen to two additional months for the special counsel charge to be served concurrently for lying to the Congress.

Moreover, the judge ordered Cohen to pay nearly $2 million in financial penalties, including forfeiture of $500,000, restitution to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) of $1.39 million for tax evasion and fines of $100,000.

Cohen has been ordered to surrender on March 6. The lawyer will serve out his sentence at a Federal Correctional Institution in Otisville, upstate New York, which is a two-hour drive from Manhattan.

Cohen is the fourth person to be sentenced to prison in the Mueller's investigation. Former Trump foreign policy aide George Papadopoulos; Richard Pinedo, a California resident who pleaded guilty to identity theft; and a Dutch attorney Alex van der Zwaan are among other individuals sentenced in connection with the US investigation into the alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Cohen referred to the day of his sentencing as one of the most meaningful days in his life because, as he said, he was getting his freedom back from living in a personal and mental incarceration since the day he accepted the offer to work for Trump.

"My weakness could be characterized as a blind loyalty to Donald Trump," Cohen said during the proceedings addressing the recent tweets made by Trump in which the president called him weak.

Cohen's lawyer Guy Petrillo called on the judge to be compassionate, taking into account the remarkable nature and significance of the defendant's cooperation with prosecutors against the most powerful man in the country � the US president. Cohen's defense team had asked for no jail time citing the cooperation.

Petrillo continued by noting that during the investigation, Cohen was targeted by attacks from both Trump and people supporting the president, including "threats against his family."

Federal prosecutors stated that the campaign funding crimes committed by Cohen carried "tremendous social cost" and the defendant "has eroded faith in the electoral process and compromised the rule of law."

Cohen broke down in tears, saying he is "painfully aware" of his actions and asked for mercy before Pauley. Trump's former lawyer gave an apology to the judge, to his family and to the people of the United States for the embarrassment they experienced.

The judge said that Cohen deserved credit for cooperating in the Russia probe. However, the judge also noted that as a lawyer, the defendant should have understood the consequences of his actions, adding that Cohen had "lost his moral compass" somewhere along the way.

"Each of crimes involved deception and each appears to have been motivated by personal ambition and greed ... [and] is a serious offense against the United States," Pauley added.

Cohen left the courthouse with his family without any interaction with the press. When asked if they were happy about the decision, Petrillo said "not at all."

As soon as the sentencing ended, Michael Avenatti, the attorney of adult film actress Stormy Daniels, spoke in front of the court, addressing Cohen's sentence and noting that he would report to prison on the same day a lawsuit was filed on behalf of Daniels.

"He deserves every day of the 36-month sentence that he will serve ... Donald Trump is next," Avenatti told reporters.

Lanny Davis, Cohen's former attorney, also reacted to his ex-client's sentencing by saying in a statement that Cohen had admitted to his offenses and fully assisted the special counsel's investigation.

"Michael has owned up to his mistakes and fully cooperated with Special Counsel Mueller in his investigation over possible Trump campaign collusion with Russian meddling in the 2016 election," Davis said.

Trump was publicly silent about the indictment of his former attorney.

"He's a liar," the president said privately referring to Cohen, according to CNN quoting a White House administration official.

In a series of tweets earlier this month, Trump called Cohen a weak person who is making up stories to get less prison time.

Earlier this week, CNN reported, citing a source close to the US president, that Trump had expressed concern about the possibility of impeachment over the allegations of his involvement in violating campaign finance rules in the case of Cohen, who had brokered Trump's alleged mistresses for silence.

Jerry Nadler, a Democratic representative from New York's 10th Congressional District in the US House of Representatives, said that claims about Trump tasking Cohen to make illegal hush payments to women, who allegedly had affairs with Trump, might result in "impeachable offenses" if proven true.

In November, a senior Democratic aide on the House of Representatives' Oversight Committee told ABC news that once Democrats were in control of the House, they would restart a probe into the payments made by Trump's former presidential campaign to Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal.

The sentencing of Cohen came along with a non-prosecution agreement reached between the Southern District of New York and the National Enquirer publisher American Media Inc. (AMI). On Wednesday, AMI pleaded guilty in paying McDougal $150,000 in coordination with the Trump campaign to prevent damaging materials to be released before the 2016 presidential election, because it could influence the outcome, the Department of Justice said in a press release.

The publisher agreed to cooperate with investigators in the future and provide information if it is related to campaign finance violations, according to the press release.

Daniels and McDougal have claimed that they had been paid $130,000 and $150,000, respectively, by Trump through Cohen to bury their stories.

Trump has denied having affairs with either of them or authorizing the alleged hush-money payments, which were in breach of campaign finance laws.

Russia has repeatedly denied charges of meddling in the vote and helping Trump to win the race against his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton. Trump has also denied allegations of collusion and has denounced Mueller's Russia investigation as a "witch hunt."