Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s longtime personal lawyer, announced that he was pleading guilty to eight federal charges on Tuesday — including campaign finance-related counts and tax evasion and bank-related charges.

The hearing at federal court in Manhattan was the latest move in a series of developments that began with the revelation early this year that Cohen had set up a company in 2016 to pay hush money to an adult film star who claimed to have had a relationship with Trump more than a decade ago.

That payment, made to Stormy Daniels, was the basis of one charge of an excessive campaign contribution, to which Cohen pleaded guilty on Tuesday.

Cohen told the court that the $130,000 payment was made "in coordination with and at the direction of" a candidate for federal office, to keep the individual from disclosing the information, and for the "principal purpose of influencing the election." Cohen did not, as part of Tuesday's appearance, specifically name Trump.

US District Judge William H. Pauley III asked Cohen if he knew at the time that his action was illegal, to which Cohen replied, "Yes, your honor."



Of another campaign finance-related charge — causing an unlawful corporate contribution — Cohen said that, again "in coordination with and at the direction of a candidate for federal office," he "and the CEO of a media company" arranged for a $150,000 payment to be made to another woman, previously reported to be former Playboy model Karen McDougal, in order to prevent information that would have been "harmful to the candidate and campaign" from being publicly disclosed. This, again, was done, Cohen said, for the "principal purpose of influencing the election."

The other six counts to which Cohen pleaded guilty include five counts of tax evasion — related to unreported income from five tax years in the past decade — and one count of making false statements to a bank — relating, in part, to a home equity line of credit loan later used to pay Daniels.

Cohen's sentencing is set for Dec. 12, and bond was set at $500,000. Under the plea agreement signed by Cohen and his lawyer, Guy Petrillo, both prosecutors and Cohen are estimating somewhere in the neighborhood of four years in prison for Cohen, with prosecutors calculating a maximum of 63 months and Cohen calculating a minimum of 46 months.

Lanny Davis, a longtime lawyer for the Clintons, recently joined Cohen’s legal team — as Cohen took on a much more adversarial approach to his longtime client, Trump.



"Michael Cohen took this step today so that his family can move on to the next chapter," Davis said in a statement on Tuesday evening. "This is Michael fulfilling his promise made on July 2nd to put his family and country first and tell the truth about Donald Trump. Today he stood up and testified under oath that Donald Trump directed him to commit a crime by making payments to two women for the principal purpose of influencing an election. If those payments were a crime for Michael Cohen, then why wouldn't they be a crime for Donald Trump?”

Rudy Giuliani, Trump's personal lawyer, issued a statement clearly conflicting with Davis's statement.

"There is no allegation of any wrongdoing against the President in the government's charges against Mr. Cohen," Giuliani said in the statement. "It is clear that, as the prosecutor noted, Mr. Cohen's actions reflect a pattern of lies and dishonesty over a significant period of time.”