A lawyer for Cohen took aim at Trump, saying they would refuse a pardon if it were offered.
Michael Cohen is ready to do his time and apparently isn’t looking for any help from Donald Trump.
This week, a lawyer representing Cohen said that the former personal lawyer to Donald Trump said that his client would not be seeking a pardon from “a man that he considers to be a corrupt and a dangerous person.” Lanny Davis, who represented Cohen in his plea deal with the federal government, told NPR that Cohen would refuse a pardon if it were offered.
The statement represents the sharp divide between Trump and his former “fixer,” who admitted in his guilty pleas to paying off two women during the 2016 presidential campaign at the order of Trump himself. Cohen pleaded guilty to eight charges including campaign finance violations related to payments made to adult film star Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal, both of whom claimed to have extramarital affairs with Trump.
Cohen and his lawyer have also taken aim directly at Trump, calling him a “criminal.”
“Mr. Cohen is not interested in being dirtied by a pardon from such a man,” Davis said.
“The president of the United States is a criminal,” he continued. “He has not plead guilty to a crime but his own lawyers have described him directing somebody to do something that is a criminal act, which is to hush up his affairs with two women, and that’s not what this is about, it’s about his hushing up those affairs in order to influence the outcome of an election.”
Reports have also indicated that Michael Cohen is willing to meet with investigators from Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. As the New York Post noted, Davis said in an interview on MSNBC that his client has knowledge on certain subjects that would be of great interest to the investigation.
The New York Post had previously reported that Cohen was present when Donald Trump Jr. informed his father in 2016 that he had met with a Kremlin-connected lawyer who was offering dirt on Hillary Clinton that had been stolen by Russian hackers. Donald Trump has frequently denied any knowledge of the meeting, which has been at the heart of the investigation over whether Trump’s team colluded with Russia. Donald Trump had long claimed that the meeting was about Russian adoptions, but recently admitted that his campaign team met in the interest of getting dirt on Clinton.
It was not clear if Robert Mueller’s team would be meeting with Michael Cohen.
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