During a press conference on Tuesday, Deputy US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Robert Khuzami laid out the eight felony charges that former Trump attorney Michael Cohen pled guilty to and stated two of them were campaign finance charges made “for the purpose of influencing the 2016 election.” Khuzami said Cohen “worked to pay money to silence two women who had information that he believed would be detrimental to the 2016 campaign” and “sought reimbursement for that money by submitting invoices to the candidate’s company which were untrue and false.”
Khuzami said five of the charges “dealt with tax evasion for the years 2012 through 2016, in which he failed to report approximately $4.1 million in reported income.”
He continued, “In addition, in count six, Mr. Cohen pled guilty to making false statements to a financial institution in connection with an application for a home equity line of credit.”
Khuzami added, “In addition, Mr. Cohen pled guilty to two campaign finance charges, one for causing an unlawful corporate contribution and a second one for personally making an excessive personal contribution, both for the purpose of influencing the 2016 election. In addition, what he did was he worked to pay money to silence two women who had information that he believed would be detrimental to the 2016 campaign and to the candidate and the campaign. In addition, Mr. Cohen sought reimbursement for that money by submitting invoices to the candidate’s company which were untrue and false. They indicated that the reimbursement was for services rendered for the year 2017, when in fact, those invoices were a sham. He provided no legal services for the year 2017, and it was simply a means to obtain reimbursement for the unlawful campaign contribution.”
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