Donald Trump says his ex-lawyer Michael Cohen deserves to go to prison, but it’s nothing to do with him
- US President says in a tweet that Michael Cohen’s crimes are ‘unrelated to Trump’
- Cohen says he violated campaign-finance laws at Trump’s direction and he lied to Congress to remain consistent with Trump’s campaign talk
US President Donald Trump said on Twitter that Michael Cohen should serve a prison term for lying to Congress, and asserted that his former personal attorney’s crimes were “unrelated to Trump”.
Cohen pleaded for leniency from a judge on Friday, saying he should be spared a prison term because he’s informing on the president and his company to Special Counsel Robert Mueller. A day earlier, he admitted in a plea deal with Mueller that he had lied to Congress about the timeline for a proposed Trump Organization development project in Moscow.
Trump has picked up his criticism of Mueller since the plea agreement last week, which disclosed for the first time that Trump had continued business dealings in Russia well into the 2016 presidential campaign, until June 2016, according to documents the special counsel filed.
Trump said in a subsequent tweet on Monday that Cohen “should, in my opinion, serve a full and complete sentence”.
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A few minutes later Trump posted another tweet praising Roger Stone, a long-time Republican operative and ally of Trump during his presidential campaign, for his “guts” in refusing to testify against the president.