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Cohen Says ‘Of Course’ Trump Knew Hush Payments to Women Were Wrong Cohen Says ‘Of Course’ Trump Knew Hush Payments to Women Were Wrong
(about 4 hours later)
WASHINGTON — President Trump’s former lawyer and fixer Michael D. Cohen said he knew arranging payments during the campaign to quiet two women who claimed to have had affairs with the candidate was wrong. He said Mr. Trump knew it was wrong at the time, too. WASHINGTON — Michael D. Cohen said in an interview broadcast Friday that he knew arranging payments during the 2016 campaign to quiet two women who claimed to have had affairs with President Trump was wrong. And, he said, Mr. Trump knew it was wrong at the time, too.
“Of course,” Mr. Cohen said, when asked by the ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos whether the president was fully aware of what his lawyer was doing. The interview aired Friday morning. “Of course,” Mr. Cohen, the president’s former personal lawyer, said when asked by the ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos whether the president was fully aware of what he was doing when Mr. Cohen made the payments.
The comments were Mr. Cohen’s first since he was sentenced to three years in prison by a federal judge on Wednesday. He pleaded guilty to helping to arrange payments to the two women, a violation of campaign finance law, and for lying to Congress about the duration of deliberations about a proposed Trump Tower in Moscow. Mr. Cohen was speaking publicly for the first time since he was sentenced to three years in prison after pleading guilty to helping to arrange payments to the two women, a violation of campaign finance law, and to lying to Congress about the duration of deliberations about a proposed Trump Tower in Moscow.
[Trump improvises new defense in hush money payments.][Trump improvises new defense in hush money payments.]
Some of the information Mr. Cohen has provided to the special counsel investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election has delivered blows to Mr. Trump’s legal strategy, including implicating Mr. Trump in campaign finance violations because he said Mr. Trump authorized the payments. “I am angry at myself because I knew what I was doing was wrong,” Mr. Cohen said, his eyes swollen and purple, but he said he had come to terms with the value of telling the truth.
On Thursday, Mr. Trump and one of his personal attorneys, Rudolph W. Giuliani, said the president was not to be blamed for the campaign finance crimes, because he trusted his lawyer, Mr. Cohen, to know the law. “I am done with the lying,” he said. “I am done being loyal to President Trump.”
Mr. Trump has lashed out at Mr. Cohen since he entered his guilty pleas in August and disclosed that Mr. Trump had directed him to arrange the payments to the two women. On Thursday, Mr. Trump accused Mr. Cohen of trying to embarrass him. While Mr. Cohen’s legal troubles may have reached a resolution, he could continue to cause problems for Mr. Trump.
“It is absolutely not true,” Mr. Cohen, his eyes purple and swollen, said in the ABC interview. “Under no circumstances do I want to embarrass the president of the United States of America. The truth is, I told the truth. I took responsibility for my actions.” Mr. Cohen has given information to prosecutors that has implicated Mr. Trump in campaign finance law violations, saying that Mr. Trump authorized him to arrange the hush payments to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal. If corroborated, that could be significant, since under the criminal campaign finance statutes, prosecutors must prove that the defendant understood the law and was knowingly breaking it.
Since he took office, Mr. Trump has maintained that there was “no collusion” between his campaign and Russia. In the interview, Mr. Cohen was asked whether the president was telling the truth about “everything related to the investigation, everything related to Russia.” At one point in the interview, Mr. Stephanopoulos asked if Mr. Trump’s denial that he had ordered him to make the payments was true.
“No,” Mr. Cohen said. “I don’t think there is anybody that believes that,” Mr. Cohen responded. “First of all, nothing at the Trump Organization was ever done unless it was run through Mr. Trump. He directed me, as I said in my allocution and I said as well in the plea, he directed me to make the payments, he directed me to become involved in these matters.”
Mr. Cohen said that he saw himself as the person tasked by fate with helping the country. Mr. Trump on Thursday also dismissed the significance of the campaign finance allegations, which he said were civil violations at best. But he said that if there were any legal issues, he had expected Mr. Cohen, as his lawyer, to know that, and he accused Mr. Cohen of trying to embarrass him.
“It is absolutely not true,” Mr. Cohen said in the ABC interview. “Under no circumstances do I want to embarrass the president.”
Mr. Cohen, who once said he would take a bullet for Mr. Trump, said he had been loyal “to someone who truthfully does not deserve loyalty.”
“One of the hopes that I have out of the punishment that I’ve received,” he added, “as well as the cooperation that I have given, I will be remembered in history as helping to bring this country back together.”
Mr. Cohen, who began working for the Trump Organization in 2007, said that the Donald Trump of today was not the same person he once knew.
“It was just a change,” he said. “I will tell you that the gentleman that is sitting now in the Oval Office — 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue — is not the Donald Trump that I remember from Trump Tower.”
One possible reason, he added, is that the pressure of the job is much more than what he thought it was going to be.
Mr. Cohen said that he now saw himself as the person tasked by fate with helping the country.
“It’s never good to be on the wrong side of the president of the United States of America, but somehow or another this task has now fallen onto my shoulders,” he said, then added, “I will spend the rest of my life in order to fix the mistake that I made.”“It’s never good to be on the wrong side of the president of the United States of America, but somehow or another this task has now fallen onto my shoulders,” he said, then added, “I will spend the rest of my life in order to fix the mistake that I made.”
Asked about Mr. Cohen’s remarks on Friday, Hogan Gidley, a White House spokesman, said the news media was “giving credence to someone who’s a convicted, self-admitted liar.”