As his former lawyer goes to jail, Trump denies wrongdoing – The Wall Street Journal

DUBLIN – Michael Cohen, who worked closely with US president Donald Trump as his personal attorney for many years, was sentenced to three years in jail for his role in campaign-finance law violations. Cohen also pleaded guilty to various other charges, including lying to Congress. Prosecutors say that Trump ordered Cohen to commit two of the violations for which he has been given jail time. Trump responded in a series of tweets, without explicitly denying ordering Cohen to make hush-money payments during his 2016 presidential campaign. The crimes for which Cohen will be serving jail time involve payoffs to adult film actresses intended to stop them from revealing their alleged sexual affairs with Trump, who has personally boasted of his involvement with adult film stars in the past. – Felicity Duncan.Trump Attempts to Distance Himself From Michael Cohen's Crimes.By Rebecca Ballhaus.(The Wall Street Journal) WASHINGTON—President Trump said Thursday that he never directed his former lawyer Michael Cohen to violate the law, a day after Mr. Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison for federal crimes including two that prosecutors said Mr. Trump directed him to commit..___STEADY_PAYWALL___."He was a lawyer and he is supposed to know the law," Mr. Trump said in a series of tweets. "It is called 'advice of counsel,' and a lawyer has great liability if a mistake is made. That is why they get paid.".Mr. Trump didn't explicitly deny ordering his former lawyer to arrange hush-money payments during the campaign, for which Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty to breaking campaign-finance law. But he asserted the payments Mr. Cohen arranged, which prosecutors said were directed by Mr. Trump and violated campaign-finance law, were legal..He accused Mr. Cohen of pleading guilty to the campaign-finance violations to "embarrass the president.".In an interview with Fox News later, the president sought to distance himself from Mr. Cohen, describing him as more of a public-relations associate than a lawyer and saying Mr. Cohen did "low-level work" for him..The campaign-finance violations to which Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty in August related to payments he arranged during the 2016 presidential campaign to buy the silence of two women who said they had sexual encounters with Mr. Trump..Last week, federal prosecutors in Manhattan wrote that Mr. Trump, identified in the document as "Individual-1," directed and coordinated the illegal payments with Mr. Cohen..The Wall Street Journal first reported a month ago the details of Mr. Trump's central role in the payments, including that he was involved in or briefed on nearly every step of the agreements..The president has denied the sexual encounters with the women as well as ordering Mr. Cohen to arrange the payments to them. "I did nothing wrong," Mr. Trump told Fox News..The president also said that in retrospect, it was a "mistake" to hire Mr. Cohen, and said he hired his former longtime lawyer after he did a "favor" for him more than a decade ago. Mr. Cohen's relationship with Mr. Trump had blossomed in 2006, as he rallied to the developer's side in a dispute with a condo board at Trump World Tower..Shortly after Mr. Cohen's sentencing, prosecutors publicly disclosed that American Media Inc., the National Enquirer's parent company, had also admitted to coordinating with the Trump campaign in making one of those illegal payments. The company said the purpose of its $150,000 payment to a former Playboy model in August 2016 was to quash her story of an affair with Mr. Trump to prevent it from influencing the 2016 election—not for legitimate editorial reasons, as the company previously said..Mr. Trump told Fox News, "I don't think we made a payment" to American Media for its purchase of a former Playboy model's story of an affair with Mr. Trump. A secret recording Mr. Cohen made of a conversation with Mr. Trump in September 2016 shows the two men discussing a plan to buy back the rights to the model's story from American Media, although they ultimately did not..Mr. Cohen last month also pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about efforts to build a Trump Tower in Moscow during the 2016 campaign, saying he lied to minimize Mr. Trump's involvement in the deal. In August, he pleaded guilty to five counts of tax fraud..Mr. Cohen's guilty pleas have escalated the pressure on the president in recent months, implicating him in federal crimes and exposing the depth of his involvement in efforts to close a real-estate deal with Russia while praising Russian President Vladimir Putin on the campaign trail. Mr. Cohen, who served as the president's longtime fixer, has spent more than 70 hours meeting with special counsel Robert Mueller's investigators, who are probing whether Trump associates colluded with Russia's efforts to interfere in the 2016 U.S. election..Mr. Trump has denied collusion, and Moscow has denied election interference. Mr. Mueller has obtained guilty pleas from at least four other Trump associates..A conviction for a campaign-finance crime requires prosecutors to show that a candidate knew the rules and violated them willfully, according to election-law experts. But that doesn't mean they would need to come up with a smoking gun. Prosecutors, for instance, could subpoena a campaign for training materials or evidence that a candidate was briefed on the law to demonstrate his or her familiarity with the rules, they said..Mr. Trump signaled that he plans to fight back against House Democrats who have said they plan to investigate his involvement in the hush-money payments. "Nobody except for me would be looked at like this," Mr. Trump told Fox News. "What about Congress, where they have a slush fund?" He didn't specify what he was referencing..Also Thursday, Mr. Trump accused his Justice Department of trying to "scare" witnesses by prosecuting those who lie to investigators, and said the FBI was "embarrassed" by its treatment of former national-security adviser Mike Flynn, who pleaded guilty last year to lying to prosecutors..The special counsel last week recommended no jail time for Mr. Flynn, saying he had provided substantial assistance to the Russia investigation. Mr. Trump on Thursday called that arrangement a "great deal." Mr. Flynn's lawyers said in a court filing Tuesday that their client should receive up to a year of probation along with 200 hours of community service, and said FBI agents failed to warn their client that lying to them was a crime..The FBI "decided the agents would not warn Flynn that it was a crime to lie during an FBI interview because they wanted Flynn to be relaxed, and they were concerned that giving the warnings might adversely affect the rapport," according to an internal FBI memo quoted by Mr. Flynn's attorneys in the sentencing memo. Though no warning is necessary to bring a prosecution for false statements, the FBI often cautions witnesses that lying is a prosecutable offense..—Joe Palazzolo contributed to this article..Write to Rebecca Ballhaus at Rebecca.Ballhaus@wsj.com

As his former lawyer goes to jail, Trump denies wrongdoing – The Wall Street Journal

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