Ex-fixer says Trump directed him to make payments and lawyer says Cohen is ready to tell all he knows about Russian interference

Donald Trump has angrily protested his innocence after the criminal convictions of two associates plunged the White House deeper into turmoil.

The US president hit back at his former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen who, in pleading guilty to eight charges including campaign finance violations on Tuesday, directly implicated Trump in paying “hush money” to prevent two women speaking out about alleged extramarital affairs.

Trump lashed out at Cohen via Twitter the following morning, accusing his once-loyal confidant of making up “stories in order to get a ‘deal’ from federal prosecutors”.

He also posted a bitter message: “If anyone is looking for a good lawyer, I would strongly suggest that you don’t retain the services of Michael Cohen!”

Trump suffered twin setbacks on Tuesday when Cohen pleaded guilty in a court in New York, just minutes before Trump’s former campaign chief, Paul Manafort, was convicted of financial crimes in Alexandria, Virginia, that could see him jailed for the rest of his life.

The developments stunned Washington, dented Trump’s claim that the investigation by the special counsel, Robert Mueller, into Russian election interference is a “witch-hunt”, and revived speculation that he could face impeachment proceedings if Democrats win a majority in the House of Representatives in November’s midterm elections.

Noting the multiple legal troubles of Trump’s inner circle, some critics even drew comparisons with President Richard Nixon’s notorious claim in November 1973: “I am not a crook.” Nixon, engulfed in the Watergate scandal, was eventually forced to resign.

Appearing in federal court in Manhattan, Cohen – who worked for Trump for more than a decade – said that during the 2016 presidential campaign, the candidate directed him to make payments to two women who claimed they had sexual affairs with the president in exchange for their silence.

The payments to the pornographic film actor Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal amounted to illegal campaign contributions and were designed to influence the results of the election, Cohen admitted in court. He said Trump repaid him for the $130,000 in hush money received by Daniels.

On Wednesday Trump offered a characteristically combative response, insisting that the campaign finance violations that Cohen had pleaded guilty to “are not a crime”.

In an interview with the conservative network Fox News, due to be broadcast on Thursday, he said: “They didn’t come out of the campaign, they came from me. And I tweeted about it. You know, I put – I don’t know if you know but I tweeted about the payments. But they didn’t come out of the campaign.

“But they weren’t – that’s not a – it’s not even a campaign violation. If you look at President Obama, he had a massive campaign violation but he had a different attorney general and they viewed it a lot differently.”

Trump was apparently referring to a fine levied on the former president’s 2008 campaign over missing and delayed disclosure of high-dollar donors in the final days of that race.

On Wednesday evening, Trump issued another self-exonerating missive, tweeting: “The only thing that I have done wrong is to win an election that was expected to be won by Crooked Hillary Clinton and the Democrats. The problem is, they forgot to campaign in numerous states!”

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But Trump’s offensive did not dominate the news agenda. Cohen’s own lawyer, Lanny Davis, kept up the pressure in a series of TV interviews. He told NBC’s Today show that Cohen “said under oath the most damaging, definitive information yesterday – that the president of the United States directed him to commit a crime.”

Cohen would not accept a pardon, Davis added, even if Trump were to offer him one.

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“Not only is he not hoping for, he would not accept a pardon. He considers a pardon from somebody who has acted so corruptly as president to be something he would never accept.”

Davis also suggested that Cohen was ready to tell Mueller, who is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, everything he knows.

“Michael Cohen knows information that would be of interest to the special counsel, in my opinion, regarding both knowledge about a conspiracy to corrupt American democracy by the Russians, and the failure to report that knowledge to the FBI,” he told MSNBC.

Davis did not specify what information Cohen has about Russian interference, but said he was “100%” prepared to reveal everything.

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“What he knows that he witnessed will be of interest to the special counsel,” he said on ABC’s Good Morning America. “He will tell the truth to everyone who asks him about Mr Trump.”

Cohen was for years one of Trump’s most trusted advisers, but his lawyer made it clear he has thoroughly turned on his billionaire boss, less than a year after he said he “would take a bullet for” the president.

Cohen believes Trump is “unsuitable to hold the office”, Davis said, citing his refusal while standing alongside Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, to accept the conclusion of US intelligence agencies that the Russians were responsible for the election disruption.

Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) If anyone is looking for a good lawyer, I would strongly suggest that you don’t retain the services of Michael Cohen!

“He’s turned his life [around] from what he did for Donald Trump, much of which he now regrets,” Davis said on the Today Show. “That’s the kind of thing that caused Michael Cohen to change his mind, and decide to dedicate himself to telling the truth to the American people.”

Trump’s opinion of Manafort is very different. He lavished praise on his former campaign chairman, saying he was “brave” and had “tremendous pressure on him and, unlike Cohen, he refused to ‘break’”.

At the White House briefing, the press secretary, Sarah Sanders, declined to rule out the possibility that Manafort might receive a presidential pardon, saying only: “The Manafort case doesn’t have anything to do with the president, doesn’t have anything to do with his campaign, and it doesn’t have anything to do with the White House.”

She also insisted: “As the president has stated on numerous occasions, he did nothing wrong. There are no charges against him in this. And just because Michael Cohen made a plea deal doesn’t mean that that implicates the president on anything.”

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Asked if the president lied to the American people about the payments, Sanders replied: “I think that’s a ridiculous accusation. The president, in this matter, has done nothing wrong and there are no charges against him.”

But there has been sharp criticism from both sides of the aisle on Capitol Hill. The Democratic leader in the House, Nancy Pelosi, said the cases were “further evidence of the rampant corruption and criminality at the heart of Trump’s inner circle.

“Cohen’s admission of paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in hush money ‘at the direction of the candidate’ to influence the 2016 election shows the president’s claims of ignorance to be far from accurate, and places him in even greater legal jeopardy.”

Most Republicans remained loyal but Senator Ben Sasse said: “Paul Manafort is a founding member of the DC swamp and Michael Cohen is the Gotham version of the same. Neither one of these felons should have been anywhere near the presidency.”