WASHINGTON, D.C. — Michael Cohen, the longtime lawyer to President Donald Trump who turned on his former boss by cooperating with various state and federal investigations, should face a “substantial term of imprisonment,” according to the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan.
The office, which is recommending Cohen serve about four years in prison, prosecuted him for eight charges of tax evasion, bank fraud and campaign finance violations. He pleaded guilty in August and said Trump directed hush-money payments to two women who said they had affairs with him years ago.
“Cohen managed to commit a panoply of serious crimes, all while holding himself out as a licensed attorney and upstanding member of the bar,” prosecutors wrote in their court filing. “His offenses strike at several pillars of our society and system of government: the payment of taxes; transparent and fair elections; and truthfulness before government and in business.”
Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III did not recommend a specific prison sentence in a separate court filing Friday. Cohen is scheduled to be sentenced Wednesday.
Cohen recently pleaded guilty to one charge brought by Mueller — lying to Congress about his pursuit of a Russian real estate deal on Trump’s behalf, concealing that he had worked on the proposal until after Trump clinched the Republican presidential nomination.
Mueller’s office described the crime as “serious” but also said that “the defendant has taken significant steps to mitigate his criminal conduct” and has “gone to significant lengths to assist the special counsel’s investigation” by meeting with the office seven times.
Cohen, the court filing said, has volunteered information on “core topics under investigation.”
Cohen said Trump had authorized him to try to set up a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in New York during the U.N. General Assembly meeting in September 2015, three months after Trump had launched his White House bid.
Cohen subsequently proposed the meeting in a radio interview, but the meeting did not take place.
Cohen had previously said that his radio comments were “spontaneous,” the court filing said, but he had “in fact conferred with Individual 1 about contacting the Russian government.” Trump has been identified as Individual 1 in previous filings in the Cohen case.
The court filing also revealed that Cohen spoke with a “trusted person” in the Russian Federation in November 2015 who offered the Trump campaign “political synergy” and “synergy on a government level” that could have a “phenomenal impact” on Trump’s political career and his efforts to build a luxury hotel and condominium tower in Moscow. The individual was not identified and Cohen apparently did not follow up on the offer.
But prosecutors wrote that Trump’s Moscow project “was a lucrative business opportunity that sought, and likely required, the assistance of the Russian government. If the project was completed, the company could have received hundreds of millions of dollars from Russian sources in licensing fees and other revenues.”
“The fact that Cohen continued to work on the project and discuss it with Individual 1 well into the campaign was material to the ongoing congressional and (special counsel) investigations, particularly because it occurred at a time of sustained efforts by the Russian government to interfere with the U.S. presidential election,” they added.
The two episodes add to the known interactions between Trump or his associates and Russians while the Kremlin was secretly trying to influence the U.S. election through stealing and releasing Democratic Party emails, phony campaign events and disinformation on social media. After Trump won the nomination, the Russian operation sought to boost his candidacy, according to U.S. intelligence.
Cohen’s lawyers previously had asked federal Judge William H. Pauley III to spare Cohen prison time because of his extensive cooperation with state and federal prosecutors in New York and the special counsel’s office in Washington.
Trump scoffed at the notion earlier this week, saying in a tweet that Cohen “lied for this outcome and should, in my opinion, serve a full and complete sentence.” He did not point out any lies he believes his former lawyer told.
On Friday morning, before prosecutors recommended a sentence for Cohen, Trump fiercely criticized the special counsel’s office in a series of tweets.
He accused Mueller of having “big time conflicts of interest” and said one of Mueller’s top prosecutors, Andrew Weissmann, had a “horrible and vicious” past in which “he wrongly destroyed people’s lives.”
Trump also implied that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein should not be allowed to supervise Mueller’s work, a suggestion that came just hours before the president announced he would nominate William Barr as the new attorney general.
Barr, who led the Justice Department from 1991 to 1993 under President George H.W. Bush, would probably oversee the Russia investigation if he is confirmed by the Senate. His predecessor, Jeff Sessions, had recused himself because he had served as a prominent Trump campaign adviser.
Mueller’s office submitted another court filing Friday regarding Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman. Manafort was convicted in August of bank fraud and tax evasion connected to his work as a political consultant for Ukraine’s pro-Russia government. Manafort later pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy to avoid a second trial on related charges, and he agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.
Prosecutors later asserted that Manafort had violated his plea deal by lying to them in interviews. In their court filing, they said Manafort lied about his communications with Konstatin Kilimnik, a business associate in Ukraine who prosecutors claim has ties to Russian intelligence. Details of those interactions were blacked out.
Manafort also lied about his contact with Trump administration officials, although the memo doesn’t say what was discussed.
Manafort is scheduled to be sentenced in March. His lawyers have denied that he lied to prosecutors.
