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Posted on 08/22/2018 9:49:58 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
President Donald Trump's former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen will "under no circumstances" accept a pardon from his former boss, Cohen's attorney Lanny Davis said Wednesday.
Cohen pleaded guilty Tuesday in a Manhattan federal court to violating campaign finance laws during the 2016 campaign, including making hush-money payments to two women who claim they had affairs with the president. Cohen implicated the president in his guilty plea, telling the court that he made those payments "in coordination and at the direction of a candidate for federal office."
Asked whether his client would seek a pardon from the president, Cohen's attorney Lanny Davis said "the answer is definitively no" during an appearance on CNN Wednesday morning.
"His answer would be no, I do not want a pardon from this man," Davis said. "Under no circumstances, since he came to the judgment after Mr. Trump's election to the presidency of the United States that his suitability is a serious risk to our country. And certainly after Helsinki, creates serious questions about his loyalty to our country."
Davis was a fixture on Wednesday morning's TV news programs, sitting for at least five interviews that aired before 9 a.m., including all three network morning shows — NBC's "Today," ABC's "Good Morning America" and "CBS This Morning."
He told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" that Trump's summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Finland, was a "significant turning point" for Cohen in deciding to turn against the president, Cohen's attorney said Wednesday. Cohen, who has worked alongside the president and his family since 2006, went through an "evolutionary" process before taking the plea deal he formally accepted on Tuesday, Davis said.
"Helsinki was a significant turning point, as he worried about the future of our country with the president of the United States aligning with somebody who everybody in his intelligence community who he appointed, including [Director of National Intelligence] Dan Coats, said that Putin interfered and tried to help Trump get elected," Davis said. "And Trump is the only one left denying that. And that shook up Mr. Cohen."
Earlier this summer, Trump met face-to-face with Russian president Putin in Helsinki, meeting one-on-one and then with aides. Those meetings were followed by a bilateral press conference where Trump seemed to accept Putin's denials that Russia was not behind a campaign of cyberattacks aimed at interfering with the 2016 U.S. presidential election, apparently taking the word of the Russian president over that of the U.S. intelligence community.
Trump later walked back his Helsinki remarks, insisting he does believe Russia was behind the interference efforts. But already, Cohen seemed to have made up his mind.
“As an American, I repudiate Russia’s or any other foreign government’s attempt to interfere or meddle in our democratic process, and I would call on all Americans to do the same,” Cohen told ABC's "Good Morning America" in an interview last month. “Simply accepting the denial of Mr. Putin is unsustainable.”
While Cohen's attorney insisted Wednesday that the former Trump attorney's decision-making process had been shaped by the Helsinki summit, Cohen's legal jeopardy was already well underway. Acting on a referral from the office of special counsel Robert Mueller, Cohen's office and residences were raided by the FBI last April, spurring discussion that Trump's attorney might turn against him in order to protect himself.
Davis said Wednesday that his client has information that would be of interest to Mueller, who is at the helm of an investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Mueller's team is also probing whether Trump's campaign colluded with Russia, an inquiry the president often calls a "witch hunt."
According to Davis, Cohen has more information that would be of interest to the Mueller investigation, and he plans to tell the truth to whoever asks. Davis was an attorney for President Bill Clinton during the height of the Monica Lewinsky scandal and for the subsequent impeachment proceedings.
"Michael Cohen knows information that would be of interest to the special counsel, in my opinion, regarding both knowledge about a conspiracy to corrupt American democracy by the Russians and the failure to report that knowledge to the FBI," Davis said. "Donald Trump violated criminal law. He may not be able to be indicted. That's an unclear question, but there's no dispute here. He directed Michael Cohen to do something that was criminal. Michael did it and admitted to it."
Cohen's decision to flip on the president and implicate Trump in his own guilty plea was a "painful process," Davis said. Cohen could face four years in prison for allegedly paying off women at Trump's request.
Asked if Cohen possesses evidence that would corroborate his claim that Trump directed him to make the hush-money payments, Davis insisted that the president's own lawyers, in a letter to Mueller's office, have written that Trump "directed" Cohen to make those payments. That admission from Trump's legal team, Davis said, is evidence enough.
"His lawyers wrote the special counsel and said that he directed Michael Cohen to make these payments. So the answer is, yes, he committed a crime," Davis said in an interview with "CBS This Morning" on Wednesday. "When a lawyer makes an admission of fact on behalf of a client, that is dispositive evidence. It's not disputable evidence."
You don’t know about the sealed indictments?
Will Lanny visit him in jail?
Will Lanny still be a Lawyer ?
He still can’t make the authorities punish him if he is given a pardon. They will simply make him go away and stop bothering them.
Did you see this?
And you were a Cruz bundler and supporter until the very end on FR. I know that will always make you behind the curve on important matters by default.
Correct. The pardon refusal is under different circumstances, before trial or before appeals are completed. Even if volunteering for punishment, a president could commute the sentence instead and get him out of everyone’s hair.
So since he’ll never work as a lawyer again, who’s paying him to turn on Trump big time?? How much did he sell his soul for?
It makes sense to both worst case and best case this cohen situation.
The worst case is that Trump does have some legal exposure from the payoffs to the ladies and there are tapes to prove it.
The best case is that Trump has no exposure and can turn this to his political advantage
My sense one day after the plea deal is that these are unknowns to the witch hunt media or they would be talking about tapes. My sense also is that these are being brought out now instead of a week before the November election because they are sniping and not backed up by substance.
I expect Giuliani and Sekulow to begin dispelling the by Friday.
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I wish to announce that I will not accept the Miss Universe award either. It’s equally likely.
No, that’s called loyalty. Look it up in the dictionary. I didn’t switch candidates just because the crowd was yelling at me and demanding I do so. I left Cruz when he suspended his campaign and looked around for another candidate to back. If Trump hadn’t entered the race chances are Cruz would be president and you’d have nothing but good things to say about him.
Of course he won’t get pardon from Trump - why on earth would Trump do that for such a chicken betrayer??? On the other hand, Cohen has already been promised the pardon from Lanny Davis and the Democrat Party. How many lies in one day can Lanny Davis spout?
Somebody please tell me what paying ‘hush’ money to women has to do with campaign contributions.
Yeah...and the poor fellow has lots of company in his fate.
Err...poor lady
I think that stuff should stay on the Q threads, not out here on the adult threads.
Like I said, you are on the slow side. You do a nice job on posting articles though.
Cohen is being manipulated. He is being skillfully transformed to become a weapon against President Trump. The same way they weaponized the intelligence community is the same way they are weaponizing him.
It is ironic that the focus here is on campaign finance violations. It certainly turns the focus away from the Clinton Foundation and its money laundering methods of campaign finance. Campaign finance violations? Yes, we need a Special Prosecutor. One that has been chosen without strings to the Deep State. One that President chooses himself—not the Deep State!!
I don’t know if you’ve noticed but there are people here who don’t support Trump. Some never will. Once my candidate was gone, I landed on Trump. Most of the others were midgets that I just couldn’t see in that office, so the choice wasn’t that difficult. But I didn’t support him to please you or the rest of the people here. Once I’m behind someone I’m behind them until there’s a good reason not to be.
I’ve posted nearly 41,000 articles so I should be pretty good at it by now.
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