Donald Trump was mercilessly ridiculed on social media for declaring that the memo recommending that his former lawyer Michael Cohen serve...
Donald Trump was mercilessly ridiculed on social media for declaring that the memo recommending that his former lawyer Michael Cohen serves jail time for a range of federal crimes 'totally clears' him of any wrongdoing.
A federal prosecutor told a judge on Friday that Michael Cohen should spend between 51 and 63 months in prison for tax evasion and violating campaign finance laws for trying to 'influence the election from the shadows'.
Robert Khuzami, the acting US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said Cohen did so by arranging payoffs to porn actress Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal to avoid October-surprise embarrassments for then-candidate Donald Trump.
The prosecutor also singled out Trump as being directly involved in efforts to silence those women in a memo
A memo from New York prosecutors identifies Cohen, Chairman 1 and Individual 1 - later identified in the document as Trump - attending an August 2014 meeting to figure out how to deal with potential negative press which could emerge from the women's stories.
But bizarrely POTUS tweeted an hour after the document was filed in New York that it '[t]otally clears the President. Thank you!'
Special counsel Robert Mueller's office filed documents saying that Cohen lied to investigators to protect Trump regarding Russian interference in the 2016 election.
But millions of people took to social media to mock Trump and claim that he may have more to answer for that on the controversy than he thinks.
Donald Trump was mocked on social media for declaring that the memo recommending that his former lawyer Michael Cohen serves jail time 'totally clears' him of any wrongdoing
Trump tweeted barely an hour after prosecutors filed their court statement about Cohen that it 'totally clears' him
Legal experts quickly reminded him that he may actually need to read the sentencing guidelines before claiming he is cleared, as the document refers 'Individual-1,' which was identified as Trump earlier this year.
POTUS has already been labeled as a major subject of interest, complete with the code name: Individual 1 in separate investigations.
Last month, evidence from two separate fronts of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation cast doubt on Trump’s version of key events involving Russia, spelling potential political and legal trouble for the President.
Trump was placed as a central figure in their probe into whether his 2016 Presidential campaign and subsequent administration conspired with the Russian government.
Last month Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress when he insisted that Trump was not pursuing plans to build a Trump Tower in Moscow after January 2016.
This cast doubt on Trump’s repeated claims that he had no business interests in Russia in a new light.
A draft special counsel document last month also indicates that prosecutors are closely scrutinizing Trump’s interactions with a longtime adviser, Roger Stone, as Stone was allegedly seeking information about WikiLeaks’ plans to release hacked Democratic emails.
Trump was said to have received direct updates from Cohen as he pursued a Moscow Trump Tower project with the Kremlin up until June 14, 2016.
The president also appears in the draft-charging documents for Trump ally Jerome Corsi, who allegedly told Stone about WikiLeaks’ plans to release damaging Democratic emails in October of that year because he knew Stone was in 'regular contact' with Trump.
The Washington Post reported last month that Trump spoke with Stone the day after he got the alert from Corsi.
Trump has given slightly differing accounts of his Moscow business ties over time. In July 2016, he tweeted: 'For the record, I have ZERO investments in Russia.” A day later he claimed, “I have nothing to do with Russia'.
In January 2017, he told a reporter: 'I have no deals that could happen in Russia, because we’ve stayed away'.
Legal experts are not sure whether a sitting President may be indicted for a federal crime or be compelled to testify in court.
Some argue that the Constitution’s provision for presidential impeachment is the only method by which a president could be held to account while still serving.
Others believe an indictment could be brought, but that it could be held in abeyance until the president left office, Fortune magazine report.
Cohen's sentencing recommendation tells a story of Cohen working 'in coordination with and at the direction of' Donald Trump – by his own admission – to arrange for the National Enquirer to buy the rights to the two women's stories and 'kill' them, preventing media exposure of their claims.
In Mueller's case, filed just last month, the special counsel alleges that Cohen has admitted lying about his efforts and timing on the Trump Tower Moscow plan, and alleges that he briefed Trump about the project's status in 2016.
Cohen told investigators that the entire projet was scrapped before the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary inJanuary 2016. In fact, however, negotiations related to the proposal were going on through the time of the July Republican National Convention.
Mueller charged Cohen with a felony for lying to his investigators, but said he was truthful in six other sessions where government lawyers plied him with questions.
Mueller's seven-page memorandum says the former Trump fixer 'provided information about his own contacts with Russian interests during the campaign and discussions with others in the course of making those contacts.'
As one example, he cited Cohen's willingness to discuss a November 2015 discussion with 'a Russian national who claimed to be a "trusted person" in the Russian Federation.' That person, he wrote, offered to help create 'synergy' with Trump 'on a government level.'
At the time, Trump was slicing his way through the Republican primary field.
Cohen told Mueller's team that his Russian contact proposed arranging a meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying 'that such a meeting could have a "phenomenal" impact "not only in political but in a business dimension as well".'
That, he wrote, was a reference to the Moscow Trump Tower proposal. Cohen never followed up, and the project was never built.
Other testimony has revealed that Trump campaign advisers discussed a separate meeting between Trump and Putin in 2016, and that Cohen spoke to a Kremlin official about a possible Trump-Putin meeting after the Republican convention in Cleveland, Ohio.
There have been suggestions over the years that the two men met in Moscow during the Trump-run Miss Universe pageant in 2013, but that claim has not been substantiated.
The Russian contact who offered to be Cohen's go-between in late 2016 is believed to be Felix Sater, a former mobster who pleaded guilty in 1998 to his involvement in a Russian Mafia-led $40 million stock fraud scheme.
Mueller also wrote that Cohen helped his office with information about 'discrete Russia-related matters' that he obtained 'by virtue of his regular contact with [Trump Organization] executives during the campaign.'
And Cohen provided 'relevant and useful information concerning his contacts with persons connected to the White House during the 2017–2018 time period.'
Khuzami's much longer 40-page sentencing memo in the New York case, however, downplays the level of help Cohen may have provided.
'Cohen’s description of those efforts is overstated in some respects and incomplete in others,' Khuzami wrote. 'To be clear: Cohen does not have a cooperation agreement.'
Former Playboy model Karen McDougal (left) and porn actress Stormy Daniels (right) both claimed to have slept with Donald Trump in the past, but the government says Cohen coordinated with Trump to make sure the women were paid for their silence – in effect a pair of massive campaign contributions designed to save the election for Trump
Special Counsel Robery Mueller spelled out in a separate memo four ways in which Cohen has been helpful to his Russia probe
Condemning Cohen's end-around attempt to influence the 2016 election, Khuzami wrote that '[w]hile many Americans who desired a particular outcome to the election knocked on doors, toiled at phone banks, or found any number of other legal ways to make their voices heard, Cohen sought to influence the election from the shadows.'
'He did so by orchestrating secret and illegal payments to silence two women who otherwise would have made public their alleged extramarital affairs with Individual-1,' he added, referring to President Trump.
'Cohen, an attorney and businessman, committed four distinct federal crimes over a period of several years. He was motivated to do so by personal greed, and repeatedly used his power and influence for deceptive ends,' he wrote.
'Now he seeks extraordinary leniency – a sentence of no jail time – based principally on his rose-colored view of the seriousness of the crimes; his claims to a sympathetic personal history; and his provision of certain information to law enforcement.
'But the crimes committed by Cohen were more serious than his submission allows and were marked by a pattern of deception that permeated his professional life (and was evidently hidden from the friends and family members who wrote on his behalf).
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