Former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen sentenced to 3 years in prison

World Today

Former Trump lawyer, Michael Cohen has been sentenced to 36 months, or three years in prison.

Cohen will be able to voluntarily surrender himself to on March 6, 2018. In a hearing that lasted a little over an hour in Manhattan federal court, the former lawyer for U.S. President Donald Trump plead guilty to two cases and nine crimes including paying money to keep two women who were claiming to have had affairs with Trump, silent.

“I blame myself for the conduct which has brought me here today,” Cohen said during the hearing, adding “it was my own weakness and a blind loyalty to this man,” referring to Trump.

During the hearing, Judge William Pauley said that Cohen’s guilty plea to lying to Congress about work he did on an aborted project to build a Trump Tower in Russia “implicate a far more insidious crime to our democratic institutions especially in view of his subsequent plea to making false statements to Congress.”

The FBI searched Cohen’s hotel room and office in April after getting a search warrant after a referral by Robert Mueller, who is the special counsel on the Russia collusion investigation. The agents seized documents and emails during the search.

DOCUMENT: Sentencing recommendations from Mueller’s office

During the hearing, Cohen seemed to address the American people, saying “you deserve to know the truth and lying to you was unjust.”