This article is about the former lawyer of Donald Trump and The Trump Organization. For the lawyer, author, and former Harvard professor, see Michael H. Cohen. Michael Dean Cohen (born August 25, 1966) is an American disbarred lawyer who served as an attorney for U.S. president Donald Trump from 2006 to 2018.
(CNN) The orbit of former advisers and associates of President Donald Trump who have been indicted or found guilty grew Thursday when Steve Bannon, his former senior adviser and chief strategist, was arrested and indicted. The crimes they have been accused of are different and stem from a constellation of alleged criminal conspiracies.
^ Borger, Gloria; Sidner, Sara; Glover, Scott (April 13, 2018). "Exclusive: FBI seized recordings between Trump's lawyer and Stormy Daniels' former lawyer". CNN. Archived from the original on April 14, 2018.
The New York Times. Archived from the original on May 5, 2018. Retrieved May 5, 2018. ^ Megerian, Chris; Sharp, Sonja (December 12, 2018). "Michael Cohen, Trump's longtime lawyer, sentenced to three years in prison". Los Angeles Times.
Files related to Daniels were among those seized in the FBI’s April 9 raids on Cohen’s Manhattan home and office and the hotel room where he had been staying.
A lawyer unconnected to the case speculated that “the facts they would have had to disclose to make those arguments were so devastating that they chose to forego the opportunity to prevent the documents from being turned over to prosecutors.”
Trump employed Cohen until May 2018, a year after the special counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections began. The investigation led Cohen to plead guilty on August 21, 2018, to eight counts including campaign finance violations, tax fraud, and bank fraud.
Cohen joined the Trump Organization in fall of 2006. Trump hired him in part because he was already an admirer of Trump, having read Trump's Art of the Deal twice. He had purchased several Trump properties and convinced his own parents and in-laws, as well as a business partner, to buy condominiums in Trump World Tower. Cohen aided Trump in his struggle with the condominium board at the Trump World Tower, which led Trump to obtain control of the board. Cohen became a close confidant to Trump, maintaining an office near Trump at Trump Tower.
On November 29, 2018, Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to the Senate Intelligence Committee and House Intelligence Committee in 2017 regarding the proposed Trump Tower Moscow deal that he spearheaded in 2015 and 2016. Cohen had told Congress that the deal ceased in January 2016 when it actually ended in June 2016, and that he had not received a response about the deal from the office of a senior Russian official when he actually had. Cohen said that he had given the false testimony in order to be consistent with Trump's "repeated disavowals of commercial and political ties between himself and Russia" and out of loyalty to Trump. Cohen received a two-month sentence, to be served concurrently with his three-year sentence for tax fraud, for the false testimony.
Cohen initiated a private arbitration case against Daniels in February 2018, based on an October 2016 non-disclosure agreement signed by Daniels in October 2016, in exchange for $130,000. Cohen obtained an order from an arbitrator barring Daniels from publicly discussing her alleged relationship with Trump.
McClatchy reported in December 2018 that a mobile phone traced to Cohen had "pinged" cellphone towers around Prague in late summer 2016. McClatchy also reported that during that time an eastern European intelligence agency had intercepted communications between Russians, one of whom mentioned that Cohen was in Prague.
Cohen began practicing personal injury law in New York in 1992, working for Melvyn Estrin in Manhattan. As of 2003, Cohen was an attorney in private practice and CEO of MLA Cruises, Inc., and of the Atlantic Casino.
On January 10, 2019, Cohen agreed to testify publicly before the House Oversight Committee to give a "full and credible account" of his work on behalf of Trump. On January 12, Fox News contributor and legal analyst Jeanine Pirro took a 20-minute, on-air phone call from Trump in which he claimed Cohen had fabricated stories to reduce the length of his expected sentence. Trump suggested that investigations should instead focus on Cohen's father-in-law, saying "that's the one people want to look at." The father-in-law, Fima Shusterman, owned condos both at Trump Tower and in a Trump development near Miami. According to former federal investigators, Shusterman actually introduced Trump to Cohen. On several subsequent occasions Trump hinted publicly that Cohen's father-in-law, or possibly even Cohen's wife, could be tied to criminal activity. On January 20 Trump's attorney Rudy Giuliani suggested on CNN that the father-in-law "may have ties to something called organized crime".
(CNN) The orbit of former advisers and associates of President Donald Trump who have been indicted or found guilty grew Thursday when Steve Bannon, his former senior adviser and chief strategist, was arrested and indicted.
Trump's onetime national security adviser, Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his talks with the then-Russian ambassador about approaches that would undermine Obama administration policy before Trump took office.
Trump commuted his sentence this summer days, before Stone was set to report to a federal prison in Georgia.
The case has become a political lightning rod, with Trump and Flynn both saying he's been treated unfairly by the judge and the prosecutors who cut his plea deal. Trump has not ruled out a pardon for Flynn.