MANHATTAN (CN) – A federal judge sentenced Michael Cohen to three years in prison on Wednesday after the onetime lawyer to President Donald Trump emotionally referenced Trump by name as implicated in his crimes.
"Recently the president tweeted a statement calling me weak, and it was correct but for a much different reason than he was implying,” Cohen, 52, told the court. “It was because time and time again I felt it was my duty to cover up his dirty deeds rather than to listen to my own inner voice and my moral compass.”
Cohen lashed out at what he called Trump’s self-interested campaign of “character assassination.”
“Not only is it improper, it creates a false sense that the president can weigh in on the outcomes of judicial proceedings that implicate him," the lawyer added.
When describing threats against his family, Cohen choked up and paused briefly to compose himself, but he did not use the tissues placed at the podium by his defense attorney Guy Petrillo.
Previewing his client’s dramatic address, Petrillo likened the Cohen prosecution to the historic event that brought down President Richard Nixon.
"The Special Counsel’s Office investigation is of utmost national significance, no less than seen 40 years ago in Watergate," Petrillo said.
Like that investigation of old, Cohen aimed his accusations squarely at the president.
“The irony is today is the day that I am getting my freedom back, as you sit at the bench and you contemplate my fate,” Cohen proclaimed, shortly before learning of his term of incarceration. “I have been living in a personal and mental incarceration ever since the fateful day that I accepted the offer to work for a real estate mogul whose business acumen I truly admired.”
Cohen handed the tissues to his sobbing daughter after his address.
For the remainder of the hour-long hearing, U.S. District Judge William Pauley III dominated proceedings by detailing what he called Cohen’s “veritable smorgasbord of fraudulent conduct.”
Cohen admitted in August that Trump coordinated and directed the hush-money payments of $130,000 to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal — meant to prevent both women from speaking about their alleged affairs with the president.
Prosecutors independently reached the same conclusion on Friday.
Transforming this allegation into a judicial finding of fact, Pauley noted that Cohen admitted that the payoffs were “at the coordination with and the direction of Individual-1.”
“Each of the crimes involved deception, and each appears to have been motivated by personal greed and ambition,” Pauley noted.
“As a lawyer, Mr. Cohen should have known better," the judge added.
Pauley concluded the hearing with instructions for Cohen to voluntarily surrender by March 6. Saying that he will recommend Cohen serve his term in Otisville, the judge also imposed a $1.4 million restitution order for unpaid taxes, as well as $500,000 in forfeiture for lying to a financial institution to receive a home-equity loan.
Cohen also must pay two fines of $50,000 apiece - one for the case in the Southern District of New York and another for the one out of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's office.
Acting Manhattan U.S. Attorney Robert Khuzami had no statement about today’s sentencing, but his office announced for the first time that it reached a nonprosecution agreement earlier this year with the National Enquirer’s parent company American Media International. The tabloid’s publisher reportedly received an immunity agreement earlier this year.
‘The Misfortune to Be Counsel to the President’
Early on in the proceedings, defense attorney Guy Petrillo labeled Cohen’s offenses as ones of circumstance.
“I submit, your honor, that no other defendant would be treated in this fashion on these offenses, but Mr. Cohen had the misfortune to be counsel to the president,” Petrillo said.