President Donald Trump's former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen made startling admissions in New York federal court on Tuesday, implicating the president in an illegal scheme to silence two women from making public their claims of having sex with him.

Anyone who has followed the news knows that the payments Cohen described were made on behalf of Trump. Indeed, later in the day, the Justice Department press office confirmed that Trump was the unidentified political candidate. But neither the prosecutor nor Cohen ever uttered Trump's name.

At the direction of a "federal candidate," Cohen said, he facilitated payments on two occasions to two women in order to keep information from the public for the purposes of winning an election.

In a press release, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York said Cohen had pleaded guilty for facilitating payments to prevent two women from discussing their "alleged affairs with a presidential candidate, thereby intending to influence the 2016 presidential election."

According to experts, Cohen may have been told that he was not allowed to use the president's name because Trump is not a defendant in the case.