TRUMP'S PIT BULL
Who is Michael Cohen and what crimes has Donald Trump’s former lawyer been jailed for?
DONALD Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen has been sentenced to three years in prison and over £1million in fines.
But who is Cohen, and what exactly was he jailed for? Here's everything you need to know.
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Who is Michael Cohen?
The 52-year-old was born on Long Island and his father was a surgeon who survived a Nazi concentration camp in Poland and his mother a nurse.
He graduated from American University in Washington and Cooley Law School in western Michigan before returning to New York.
As well as working in a law firm, he also ran a successful taxi business and made a failed bid to get elected to New York City Council.
Cohen married Ukraine-born Laura Shusterman in 1994 and the couple have a daughter.
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When did he work for Donald Trump?
Cohen worked for the President from 2006 to 2018.
But even before they met was a firm admirer of Trump, reportedly reading the property tycoon's The Art of the Deal book several times.
He first entered into Donald Trump’s orbit when his family purchased a number of properties in the Trump World Tower, near the United Nations in New York.
Cohen had become the treasurer of the building's board and later acquired more properties.
He was introduced to Trump by his son, Donald Jr, in 2006 and after advising him on a few legal matters, was surprised to be offered a job in 2007.
Cohen soon acquired a reputation as a fiercely loyal and aggressive defender of his boss, once saying he would “take a bullet” for Trump and was also described as a “pit bull”.
He became executive vice-president of the Trump Organisation and pushed for his boss to run for the presidency even launching a website Should Trump Run? to gauge public opinion.
As the scandal over payments to Stormy Daniels began to gather pace, Cohen was replaced by former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani as Trump’s personal attorney in May 2018.
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Why did he plead guilty?
Cohen has admitted charges relating to two separate inquiries both of which are potentially hugely damaging for the President.
The first set of charges relate to payments made to former porn star Stormy Daniels.
The second set relate to the investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller into whether Trump colluded Russia to sway the 2016 election.
Daniels, 39, real name Stephanie Clifford, alleges that she slept with Trump following a celebrity golf tournament in Nevada in 2006.
She has regularly claimed the payment made to her was hush money – to stop her being interviewed about her alleged affair with the now US President.
On April 9 the FBI raided Cohen's offices in Manhattan seizing records relating to the payment.
In August Cohen admitted paying Daniels £92,000 days before the US election in 2016.
Cohen pleaded guilty to violating finance laws during the 2016 presidential election by handling payments to Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who also claims she slept with Trump.
Prior to that Cohen's lawyer released audio of a conversation he had with Trump about the Stormy payment.
In September, Cohen's lawyer said his client had been providing "critical information" to Mueller's probe.
Then on November 29, Cohen admitted he lied about a Trump property deal in Russia during the 2016 election.
During a court hearing in Manhattan he admitted submitting a false written statement about a Trump Organisation plan to build a skyscraper in the Russian capital.
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What has Cohen been jailed for?
The president's ex-lawyer was sentenced to three years in prison on December 12 for his role in making illegal hush-money payments to women to help Trump's 2016 election campaign and lying to Congress about a proposed Trump Tower project in Russia.
US District Judge William Pauley in Manhattan sentenced Cohen to 36 months for the payments, which violated campaign finance law, and to two months for the false statements to Congress.
The two terms will run simultaneously.
The judge set March 6 for Cohen's voluntary surrender.
As part of the sentence, the judge ordered Cohen to forfeit £39,529 and pay restitution of nearly £1.1million for the campaign finance law violations.
The three-year sentence imposed by the judge was a modest reduction from the four to five years recommended under federal guidelines, but still underscored the seriousness of the charges.
MORE TRUMP NEWS
How did Trump respond to Cohen's testimony?
Trump hit out at his former fixer Michael Cohen's "shameful" evidence to Congress - insisting it was "a lot of lies".
But the president said Cohen told the truth when he said he had no evidence the Trump campaigned colluded with Russia.
He called the testimony a "fake hearing" and condemned the Congressional oversight committee for holding it during his nuke talks with North Korea.
Mr Trump said: “It was pretty shameful, I think.
“Having it during this very important summit is sort of incredible.”
And Mr Trump said of Cohen: "He lied a lot but he didn’t lie about one thing: He said no collusion with the Russian hoax.
“I was actually impressed he didn’t say I think there was collusion for this reason or that… I was a little impressed by that frankly.”
The Hanoi summit was overshadowed by Cohen's bombshell evidence in which he branded the President a "conman, racist and cheat".
The disgraced attorney, who worked for Mr Trump for a decade, claimed he made racist remarks about black voters and lied about his business dealings with Russia.
He sensationally claimed Mr Trump had advance knowledge when Hillary Clinton's emails were leaked.
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