(Image source from: POLITICO Europe)
Donald Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen has been sentenced to three years of imprisonment on Wednesday on campaign finance violations for paying hush money to two women who said they had affairs with the United States President, including multiple charges.
In court, Cohen said he took "full responsibility" for his actions while working for Trump.
Cohen's sentence will be the longest up to now for anyone involved with the President or stemming from special counsel. "I take full responsibility for each act that I pled guilty to the personal ones to me and those involving the President of the United States of America," Cohen said.
The 52-year-old Cohen was sentenced to 36 months in prison by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
The U.S. District Judge William Pauley also handed Cohen an additional two months for special counsel Robert Mueller's charge. Mueller is probing Russian interfering in the 2016 election. This charge will be served at the same time with the U.S. attorney's New York office term.
Cohen has been ordered to surrender on March 6. The judge agreed to urge Otisville prison, in upstate New York, as the prison where Cohen will serve his sentence.
Pauley described the crimes that Cohen had pleaded guilty to as "a veritable smorgasbord of fraudulent conduct" before announcing his sentence. Cohen also said he was living in a "personal and mental" prison since he started working for Trump.
"This may seem hard to believe, but today is one of the most meaningful days of my life... I have been living in a personal and mental incarceration ever since the day that I accepted the offer to work for a real estate mogul whose business acumen that I deeply admired,” he said.
Cohen's attorney, Guy Petrillo, had sought leniency for his client, saying his "cooperation here should be viewed against a non-standard framework". The special counsel's office "investigation is of utmost national significance, no less than seen 40 years ago in Watergate".
In August, Cohen had pleaded guilty to charges of tax evasion, campaign finance violations and making false statements to a federally-insured bank.
The plea entered followed the filing of an eight-count criminal information, which alleged that Cohen concealed more than $4 million in personal income from the Internal Revenue Service, made mendacious statements to a federally-insured financial institution in connection with a $500,000 home equity loan, and, in 2016, caused $280,000 in payments to be made to silence two women who otherwise planned to speak publicly regarding their alleged affairs with a presidential candidate, thereby intending to influence the 2016 presidential election.
Trump was not named in the charges, but then it was unsubtle Cohen was acting on his behalf.
The payments included $130,000 to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels, which the government considers an illegal donation to Trump's campaign since it was intended to improve his election chances.
The charges against Cohen also include paying money to the two women in 2016 "to suppress" their stories from publishing in media "so as to prevent it from influencing the election".
"Cohen was able to arrange for the purchase of two stories, so as to suppress them and prevent them from influencing the election," the federal prosecutors had said.
-Sowmya Sangam
