Trump: Michael Cohen Very Guilty, But All Things Are ‘Unrelated’ To Me
Michael Cohen Image by Getty Images (8)
President Trump called for Michael Cohen, his former lawyer, to “serve a full and complete sentence,” Talking Points Memo reported Monday.
The president listed on Twitter the crimes that Cohen has pleaded guilty to, scoffing at his audacity to ask for a shorter prison sentence. He also claims the crimes were “unrelated to Trump,” despite that Cohen, in his testimony, alluded to lying and making payments at the his direction.
“You mean he can do all of the TERRIBLE, unrelated to Trump, things having to do with fraud, big loans, Taxis, etc., and not serve a long prison term?” Trump wrote. “He makes up stories to get a GREAT & ALREADY reduced deal for himself.”
Trump continued in another tweet: “He lied for this outcome and should, in my opinion, serve a full and complete sentence.”
“Michael Cohen asks judge for no Prison Time.” You mean he can do all of the TERRIBLE, unrelated to Trump, things having to do with fraud, big loans, Taxis, etc., and not serve a long prison term? He makes up stories to get a GREAT & ALREADY reduced deal for himself, and get…..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 3, 2018
Cohen, who once said he would take a bullet for Trump, is cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation in hopes of receiving a shorter prison sentence.
In August, Cohen pleaded guilty to eight counts in federal court for campaign finance violations — where he said Trump directed him to make hush money payments to women during the 2016 campaign — tax evasion and bank fraud. Last week, he pleaded guilty to making false statements to Congress about his attempts at a Trump Tower deal in Moscow during the 2016 presidential campaign.
The latter was part of a plea deal with Mueller. Cohen currently faces 46 to 63 months in prison and a fine of up to $1 million.
Alyssa Fisher is a news writer at the Forward. Email her at fisher@forward.com, or follow her on Twitter at @alyssalfisher
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
