Live Updates
Our live coverage of Michael Cohen’s sentencing has ended. Scroll through the posts below to see how it unfolded or follow CNN Politics for more.
Artist Christine Cornell was in the courtroom today for Michael Cohen’s sentencing and created these sketches. (It’s a federal courtroom, so no photography was permitted.)
Here’s what it looked like inside his hearing:
So far, 36 people and entities have been charged in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.
Of those, seven people pleaded guilty. They are….
And now, four of the seven sentenced to prison:
One person — Paul Manafort — was convicted at trial.
Read more about the numbers behind the Mueller investigation here.
The sentencing hearing for Michael Cohen was emotional at times, CNN’s Kara Scannell reported.
Scannell, who was inside the courtroom, said Cohen teared up as he spoke to the judge about bringing pain and shame to his family. Sobbing could be heard in the courtroom when Cohen was finally sentenced to three years in prison.
“His family members were all very emotional. He was surrounded by friends and family. His daughter sitting right behind him, his wife, son, his mother, father, in-law, cousins, they all came over after the sentencing, which seemed like an absolute shock to them,” Scannell said.
After the sentencing, Cohen and his family hugged and engaged in “long embraces,” she reported. Handshakes were exchanged.
“Everyone looked very shocked and I think they were expecting him to have a much lighter sentence, if not any time at all,” Scannell said.
Watch below for more:
Lanny Davis, Michael Cohen’s former attorney, just issued a statement about Cohen’s sentencing, saying that he “owned up to his mistakes and fully cooperated” with the special counsel’s investigation.
Davis said he will no longer serve as Cohen’s attorney since the sentencing is over.
Instead, he said he will serve as Cohen’s communications adviser.
Read his full statement:
“Michael Cohen, former attorney to Donald Trump, continues to tell the truth about Donald Trump’s misconduct over the years.
At the appropriate time, after Mr. Mueller completes his investigation and issues his final report, I look forward to assisting Michael to state publicly all he knows about Mr. Trump — and that includes any appropriate Congressional committee interested in the search for truth and the difference between facts and lies. Mr. Trump’s repeated lies cannot contradict stubborn facts.
Michael has owned up to his mistakes and fully cooperated with Special Counsel Mueller in his investigation over possible Trump campaign collusion with Russian meddling in the 2016 election. While Mr. Mueller gave Michael significant credit for cooperation on the “core” issues, it is unfortunate that SDNY prosecutors did not do the same. To me, their judgment showed a lack of appropriate proportionality.
Since the sentencing process has been completed, I no longer need to serve as an attorney for Michael, but will continue to serve as a communications advisor.”
President Trump’s former “fixer” Michael Cohen, who was just sentenced to three years in federal prison, emerged from the courtroom moments ago and said nothing to the scores of press assembled there.
His wife and children left moments before.
They squeezed into a waiting black SUV.
Watch the moment:
In addition to the three-year prison sentence, Judge William Pauley imposed more than $1 million in restitution for Michael Cohen.
Pauley imposed $500,000 in forfeiture to Cohen, and $1.39 million in restitution.
Cohen is scheduled to surrender on March 6.
The sentencing of Michael Cohen has concluded.
Cohen has been ordered to surrender on March 6.
The judge agreed to recommend Otisville Federal Correctional Facility, in Upstate New York, as the prison where Cohen will spend his time. It’s less than a two hour drive from Manhattan.
Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former personal attorney, was just sentenced to three years in prison.
Cohen was sentenced for eight criminal counts he pleaded guilty to in August. The judge gave him an additional two months for the special counsel charge, to be served concurrently with the US attorney’s New York office term.
He has been ordered to surrender on March 6.
Watch more below:
Judge William Pauley walked through each of the counts against Cohen, saying “each of these crimes is a serious offense against the United States.”
“Mr. Cohen pled guilty to a veritable smorgasbord of fraudulent conduct,” he said.
Michael Cohen has finished speaking in his sentencing hearing.
In his statement to the judge, he took responsibility “for each act that I pled guilty to: The personal ones to me and those involving the President of the United States of America.”
During his remarks to the courtroom Cohen, while referring to President Trump, said that he is committed to “ensuring that history will not remember me as the villain of his story.”
The federal judge is now speaking.
Michael Cohen just addressed a tweet from his former boss, President Donald Trump.
“Recently the President tweeted a statement calling me weak and it was correct but for a much different reason than he was implying. It was because time and time again I felt it was my duty to cover up his dirty deeds.”
Cohen also called this “one of the most meaningful days of his life.”
“This may seem hard to believe,” Cohen told the court, “but today is one of the most meaningful days of my life. I have been living in a personal and mental incarceration ever since the day that I accepted the offer to work for a real estate mogul whose business acumen that I deeply admired.”
That real estate mogul, of course, is Trump.
Michael Cohen is now addressing the court at his sentencing in Manhattan.
Cohen pleaded guilty in August to eight charges, including several counts of tax fraud and campaign finance violations. He also pleaded guilty last month to a charge of lying to Congress from Mueller’s office.
Assistant US Attorney Nicholas Roos addressed the campaign-finance crimes, saying they carried a “tremendous societal cost.”
Roos said “in committing these crimes, Mr. Cohen has eroded faith in the electoral process and compromised the rule of law.”
Jeannie Rhee, with special counsel Robert Mueller’s team, said Cohen has been honest.
“He has told the truth,” she told the court.
Last week, the special counsel’s team released a memo about Cohen saying he has cooperated with its inquiries.
After Rhee spoke, Assistant US Attorney Nicholas Roos addressed the court on behalf of the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.
“For all the hypothesizing that Mr. Petrillo has done, Mr. Cohen can’t have it both ways,” he said, referencing Cohen’s lawyer, Guy Petrillo’s speech to the court. “There is a standard way this office conducts cooperation.”
He added: “We’ve treated Mr. Cohen just the way we treat every other defendant that deal with the us attorney’s office.”
The Manhattan US attorney’s office has asked for Cohen to receive a “substantial” sentence of roughly four years. However, Cohen and his legal team has asked for no prison time, citing his cooperation with multiple investigations — including the special counsel’s Russia probe.
Michael Cohen’s lawyer, Guy Petrillo, said Cohen has been treated unlike other defendants by prosecutors, noting that “Mr. Cohen had the misfortune to have been counsel to the President.”
Cohen long served as the President’s personal attorney and Trump’s “fixer.” Cohen even once boasted he would “take a bullet” to protect his longtime boss.
Petrillo, in court today, said Cohen wants to cooperate but that “he’s wary of a long term cooperation agreement.”
“He wants both to remove himself and remove his family from the glare of the cameras,” he said.
Michael Cohen’s lawyer Guy Petrillo, addressing the court, said that his client “came forward to offer evidence against the most powerful person in our country,” alluding to Cohen’s testimony about President Trump.
Cohen, Petrillo said, couldn’t “anticipate the full measure of attack that would be made against him” by both the President and “partisans and citizens who happen to be aligned with the President.”
Petrillo said special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election “is of utmost national significance, no less than seen 40 years ago in Watergate.”
Petrillo also noted Cohen’s actions “stand in profound contrast to the decision of some others not to cooperate and allegedly to double deal while pretending to cooperate.”
CNN caught up with Michael Cohen’s in-laws, Fima and Ania Shusterman, as they made their way to court this morning. Asked it they felt Cohen would be coming home today, they were doubtful.
CNN: Do you think he’ll be coming home today?
Shusterman: “I don’t think so.”
Cohen pleaded guilty in August to two campaign finance violations tied to payments he made or orchestrated to women during the campaign to stay silent about alleged sexual encounters with Trump, five counts of tax fraud and one count of making false statements to a bank.
The Manhattan US Attorney’s office has asked for Cohen to receive a “substantial” sentence of roughly four years.
Watch below:
US District Court Judge William Pauley III is speaking in court and addressing the discrepancy between how the defense and the government view the grouping of the counts against Michael Cohen for the purposes of sentencing.
Pauley says the government’s argument is correct in terms of how to group the tax evasion counts for sentencing purposes.
Here’s how the guidelines break down, according to Pauley:
The Michael Cohen sentencing just started at the Manhattan federal courthouse.
Cohen’s sentence today will be the result of both the special counsel’s investigation and a related case from Manhattan federal prosecutors.
He is facing years in prison: The Manhattan US attorney’s office has asked for Cohen to receive a “substantial” sentence of roughly four years. Meanwhile, special counsel Robert Mueller’s office did not give a sentence recommendation but said Cohen had cooperated with its inquiries.
Michael Cohen has arrived at the Manhattan federal courthouse for his sentencing, accompanied by his wife, daughter and son.
His sentencing is set to begin at 11 a.m. ET.
Watch the moment below:
Cohen’s sentence today will be the result of both the special counsel’s investigation and a related case from Manhattan federal prosecutors.
Here’s what you need to know about the two cases:
Federal prosecutors said for the first time Friday that Michael Cohen acted at the direction of Trump when the former fixer committed two election-related crimes during the 2016 presidential campaign.
Prosecutors wrote, “In particular, and as Cohen himself has now admitted, with respect to both payments, he acted in coordination with and at the direction of Individual-1.” Individual-1 is the term prosecutors have been using to refer to the President.
Why it matters: In August, Cohen pleaded guilty to eight federal crimes after being charged by Manhattan federal prosecutors. Those included tax fraud, making false statements to a bank and campaign-finance violations tied to his work for Trump, including payments Cohen made or helped orchestrate that were designed to silence women who claimed affairs with the then-presidential candidate. Trump has denied those claims.
Court documents released Friday by special counsel Robert Mueller and federal prosecutors detail the alleged lies Donald Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen told both publicly and to the special counsel’s investigators.
Here are the key takeaways:
For the first time, federal prosecutors say that Trump directed Cohen to make payments designed to silence women who claimed affairs with Trump. Mueller’s memo lays out how the Trump Tower Moscow project is relevant to Russia’s election meddling during the 2016 campaign. Cohen’s lies, some of which he admitted to in a guilty plea last week, included lying to the special counsel investigators about the Trump Tower Moscow project after offering to cooperate. Mueller’s team says he eventually took responsibility for his lies, later explaining he was trying not to contradict his congressional testimony. Prosecutors explained that Cohen’s effort to lie about the Moscow project continuing through June 2016 were an effort to alter the investigation. While the special counsel’s office does not make a recommendation to give Cohen reduced prison time, Mueller still says that Cohen was a cooperative witness.
Watch: Toobin outlines Mueller’s Cohen documents
Michael Cohen will be sentenced today. It’s the result from both special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation and a related case from Manhattan federal prosecutors.
Cohen asked a US judge last Thursday for no prison time, citing his cooperation with multiple investigations, including the special counsel’s Russia probe.
However, The Manhattan US attorney’s office has asked for Cohen to receive a “substantial” sentence of roughly four years. The special counsel’s office did not give a sentence recommendation but said Cohen had cooperated with its inquiries.
What you need to know about his charges
Cohen pleaded guilty last month to lying to Congress about plans to develop Trump Tower in Moscow when he told lawmakers they had ended in January 2016 and the extent of his conversations with the president, but he did not provide a lot of detail about those discussions in court.
In addition to admitting he lied to Congress, Cohen pleaded guilty to eight criminal charges brought on by the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York in August, including tax fraud, making false statements to a bank and campaign finance violations relating to hush-money payments made to women alleging affairs with President Trump.
