Cohen seeks ‘time served’ prison sentence, says again his crimes were meant to protect Trump

Their filing detailed what they said was Cohen’s already extensive cooperation, including seven voluntary interviews with the team of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, as well as meetings with federal prosecutors in New York, representatives of the New York State Attorney General’s office and officials with the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance, which are conducting wide ranging probes into Trump’s campaign and his charitable foundation.

Friday’s filing directly connected Cohen’s wrongdoing to Trump. Cohen’s lawyers asserted, for example, that Cohen paid off women to keep quiet about alleged affairs with the president to stop them from “disseminating narratives that would adversely affect the Campaign and cause personal embarrassment.” And they said Cohen lied about efforts to finalize a Trump business project in Moscow during the heart of the campaign because he knew it was Trump’s “strongly voiced mantra” to minimize the investigation into connections between his campaign and the Kremlin.

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They alleged Cohen was assured by Trump he would be reimbursed for paying the lawyer of one of the women accusing him of an affair, and that Cohen “kept his client contemporaneously informed and acted on his client’s instructions.”

Similarly, Cohen’s lawyers wrote that when Cohen lied to Congress about the Trump Tower project, he did so essentially because he knew what the president wanted. The lawyers alleged that as Cohen’s own lawyer prepared his responses to congressional committees, Cohen “remained in close and regular contact with White House-based staff and legal counsel to Client-1.”

“As such, he was (a) fully aware of Client-1’s repeated disavowals of commercial and political ties between himself and Russia, as well as the strongly voiced mantra of Client-1 that investigations of such ties were politically motivated and without evidentiary support,” Cohen's lawyers wrote.

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Cardinal said:

The sentencing submission supplied to by the lawyers of Cohen reiterate and clarify several important points:

1)That Cohen was acting with the knowledge of and in communication with Trump aides in lying to Congress and the American people for Trump's political and personal benefit.
"Furthermore, in the weeks during which his then-counsel prepared his written response to the Congressional Committees, Michael remained in close and regular contact with White House based-staff and legal counsel to Trump." -from the sentencing submission

"That last sentence is extremely important and interesting. It is also very carefully worded. The sentence strongly implies that White House staff and Trump's attorneys knew in advance that Cohen would lie to Congress and were involved in crafting his statements." -Renato Mariotti

2)That Cohen acted at Trump's direction to illegally pay the women Trump slept with. Ordering Cohen to commit a Federal Crime is itself a Federal crime. This would make Trump an unindicted co-conspirator.

3)That Cohen is cooperating with the NYAG office with regards to the Trump Foundation lawsuit and the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance regarding Trump's tax fraud as reported by the New York Times two months ago.





https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...ory.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.ede0c94e8f0a

Also worth the read is this excellent analysis by Renato Mariotti of the sentencing submission by Cohen's lawyers:

https://twitter.com/renato_mariotti/status/1068786624606101504

Per the conspiracy between Cohen, Trump and Trump's staff:

"Depending on what Trump’s staff and attorneys knew, this could very well be a conspiracy to lie to Congress, which is a crime. (A conspiracy is just an agreement to commit a crime.) But it may be extremely difficult to prove based on what Cohen’s attorney said. What it would take to prove a conspiracy of that nature is testimony from another co-conspirator (a Trump attorney or staffer) that their conversations with Cohen were a way for him to run his lies past them for approval, and they approved the lies." -Renato Mariotti

So clearly, while much has been learned already, we still have further to go.

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NeverTrumpGOP said:

I wrote this on another thread:

To me this depends on if Trump held something over Cohen. Was he coerced from the very beginning? What was the favor Cohen did for Trump way back in 2006?? I'm guessing it's related to Stormy, but willfully covering up having sexy times with pornstars is not something that normal everyday innocent people do. I could totally see his defense tactic if Cohen was a unwilling participant and/or slave to the Trump Organization for a decade, but it would need to be like a hostage situation, for me to believe him or offer any sympathy.

I just see no reason otherwise for these people to stick with Criminal Trump for at least a decade for seemingly no reason whatsoever. So I want to know why Cohen chose to work for Trump and get himself involved in this mess year after year.

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Cardinal said:

I'm not sure what being what is essentially a hostage to Trump has to do with anything. Why did Cohen choose to work for him? For the same reason that lots of people do: because of the belief that hitching themselves to Trump will result in their own enrichment. But he chose to break the law in Trump's service, took at least one direct order to break one law, and that's that.

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NeverTrumpGOP said:

Well I mean, he's asking for time served. I mean that's essentially saying that he was a prisoner in the Trump Organization anyway right? But he's trying to gain sympathy from the public at large and I'm not buying it. It will take a lot for me to be sympathetic to his cause.

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FreedomFromAll said:

I seriously doubt that Mueller does not have collaborating witnesses/evidence.

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Cardinal said:

If there is a direct link that Mueller can follow to White House staff communicating with Cohen in such a way as to prove criminal conspiracy, then that will be Mueller's next step (assuming he hasn't done so already). If he can get them on record, Trump's goose is cooked.

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FreedomFromAll said:

I find it hard to believe that Mueller would just rely on Cohen alone, this should get interesting.

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