FILE PHOTO: Michael Cohen, U.S. President Donald Trump's former lawyer, arrives for his sentencing at United States Court house in the Manhattan borough of New York City, New York, U.S., December 12, 2018. REUTERS/Jeenah Moon

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said he made a mistake hiring longtime personal lawyer Michael Cohen years ago and that his one-time fixer did “low-level work” for him, mostly in public relations.

Cohen was sentenced to prison on Wednesday on charges that included hush money payments to women before the 2016 presidential election.

“In retrospect, I made a mistake, because of what he did was all unrelated to me, except for the two campaign finance charges that are not criminal and shouldn’t have been on there,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News. They put that on to embarrass me.”