On Friday, federal prosecutors in New York answered those questions with a resounding No.

In making their stand against Mr. Cohen, they were arguing for the legitimacy of United States campaign finance law — which, for all its loopholes, may have some teeth, after all — and for the value of truth and transparency in campaigns.

Mr. Cohen has pleaded guilty to two sets of criminal campaign violations. By secretly paying Ms. Daniels $130,000 for her silence in October 2016, he was flouting the law that limits individual campaign contributions to $2,700 in a general election.

And by arranging for The Enquirer’s parent company to squelch Ms. McDougal’s affair accusation by buying the exclusive rights to her story for $150,000 and then sitting on it — a practice known in the tabloid trade as “catch-and-kill” — Mr. Cohen was inducing A.M.I. to violate a law that prohibits corporations from spending any money in campaigns in coordination with candidates or their agents.

When prosecutors proposed a “substantial” prison sentence for Mr. Cohen on Friday, they cited those violations ahead of other crimes to which he has pleaded guilty, including tax evasion and lying to Congress.

“Cohen’s commission of two campaign finance crimes on the eve of the 2016 election for president of the United States struck a blow to one of the core goals of the federal campaign finance laws: transparency,” the prosecutors wrote in the sentencing memo. “While many Americans who desired a particular outcome to the election knocked on doors, toiled at phone banks or found any number of other legal ways to make their voices heard, Cohen sought to influence the election from the shadows.”

People following the yarn may not have expected that a story centered on a porn star and a onetime Playboy model would end up with prosecutorial paeans to American ideals. But here we are.