Donald Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen has been sentenced to three years in federal prison for a series of crimes he committed while working for Trump.
U.S. District Judge William Pauley sentenced Cohen to 36 months in jail in Manhattan federal court this morning.
The sentence stems from eight federal charges he pleaded guilty to in August, including campaign finance violations tied to a scheme to pay off women alleging affairs with Trump in order to prevent damaging information from surfacing during the 2016 presidential campaign.
His sentence also entails two months to be served concurrently for a single charge of lying to Congress about plans to build a Trump property in Moscow, which Cohen pleaded guilty to in late November as part of a deal with special counsel Robert Mueller.
That deal guarantees his cooperation in Mueller’s ongoing Russia investigation.
Cohen will be allowed to voluntarily surrender to federal authorities on March 6.
He has also been ordered to pay $1.4 million in restitution, forfeiture of $500,000 and a fine of $50,000.
Cohen, at his sentencing, said Trump was right to call him weak because it was his “duty” to cover up Trump’s “dirty deeds.”
“Recently the president tweeted a statement calling me weak, and it was correct but for a much different reason than he was implying,” Cohen said, according to multiple reports. “It was because time and time again I felt it was my duty to cover up his dirty deeds.”
Trump last month blasted Cohen as a “weak person” for pleading guilty to lying to Congress in Mueller’s Russia probe.
Cohen said he has been “leading a personal and mental incarceration” ever since he began working for Trump in the early 2000s.
“This may seem hard to believe but today is one of the most meaningful days of my life,” Cohen said. “The irony is today is the day I get my freedom back. I have been leading a personal and mental incarceration ever since the fateful day that I accepted the offer to work for a famous real estate mogul whose business acumen I greatly admired.”
Cohen also lamented the impact his legal woes have had on his family.
“There is no sentence that can supersede the suffering I live with on a daily basis knowing that my actions have brought undeserved pain and shame upon my family,” Cohen said. “I deserve that shame, they do not.”
Toward the end of his remarks, Cohen handed a tissue to his crying daughter.
Cohen concluded that he takes responsibility “for each act that I pled guilty to: The personal ones to me and those involving the President of the United States of America.”