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Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, has entered into a plea deal with federal prosecutors for the United States attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York. He pleaded guilty to federal criminal charges on eight counts in a Manhattan federal court on Tuesday afternoon.
Cohen was charged with five counts of tax evasion from 2012 to 2016, one count of making a false statement to a financial institution from February 2015 to April 2016, one count of being a “willful cause” of an unlawful corporate contribution from June 2016 to October 2016, and one count of making an excessive campaign contribution on October 27. 2016.
Cohen pleaded guilty to all of the charges, including failing to report $4 million in taxes. He said he violated campaign finance laws in coordination with and at the direction of an unnamed candidate — presumably Trump — in coordinating payouts to porn actress Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal, both of whom alleged to have had affairs with Trump. He said he acted for the purpose of influencing an election.
Cohen has been under investigation for payments he arranged to women who claimed they had affairs with Trump, as well as up to $20 million in tax fraud and bank fraud. Special counsel Robert Mueller started the investigation into Cohen and then passed it off to the Southern District of New York, with which he struck the agreement on Tuesday.
Cohen, who for years was one of the president’s fiercest defenders and once said he would take a bullet for Trump, has distanced himself from his old boss in recent months and sent several public signals that he’s no longer so loyal to Trump.
“My wife, my daughter, and my son have my first loyalty and always will,” Cohen said in an interview with George Stephanopoulos for Good Morning America in July. “I put my family and country first.”
The plea deal, in full, is below:
