Trump denies directing ex-lawyer to break law

Source: Xinhua| 2018-12-14 00:06:31|Editor: Mu Xuequan
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WASHINGTON, Dec. 13 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday denied allegations that he directed his former personal lawyer to break the law to help him win the presidency, one day after the lawyer was sentenced to three years in prison.

"I never directed Michael Cohen to break the law. He was a lawyer and he is supposed to know the law. It is called 'advice of counsel,' and a lawyer has great liability if a mistake is made. That is why they get paid," the president wrote in one of a series of tweets Thursday morning.

Cohen was sentenced to a three-year jail term on Wednesday after he pleaded guilty to multiple crimes, including tax evasion, lying to Congress, as well as violating campaign-finance laws by paying two women who alleged affairs with Trump hush-money to buy their silence on the eve of the 2016 Election Day.

The former Trump lawyer is also subject to forfeiture of 500,000 U.S. dollars, restitution of 1.4 million dollars and fines totaling 100,000 dollars. He was ordered to surrender on March 6.

"It was my blind loyalty to this man that led me to take a path of darkness instead of light. I felt it was my duty to cover up his dirty deeds," Cohen said of Trump in a tearful apology at a federal court in New York on Wednesday.

Trump in his tweet claimed that "many campaign finance lawyers have strongly stated I did nothing wrong with respect to campaign finance laws, if they even apply, because this was not campaign finance."

He added that the hush-money payments as well as the alleged Trump Organization real-estate project in Moscow, about which Cohen was accused of and had admitted to lying to Congress, were not criminal charges, and that Cohen "probably was not guilty even on a civil basis" concerning the two charges.

In addition, none of Trump's three tweets in the morning mentioned the acknowledgement by the National Enquirer tabloid's publisher of its 150,000-dollar payment to Karen McDougal, one of the aforementioned two women, in 2016 to "suppress the woman's story" and "prevent it from influencing the election."

According to an agreement between the prosecutors and the company, American Media Inc. (AMI), which was also allegedly involved in making those hush-money payments, the prosecutors will not prosecute the company and AMI said it will engage in further cooperation with law enforcement.

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