Donald Trump’s attorney Michael Cohen just confessed to a crime

| 1:31 pm EST February 14, 2018
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Now that Donald Trump is facing legal trouble over his apparent decision to pay off adult film actress Stormy Daniels by illegally using campaign funds, his attorney Michael Cohen is trying to defuse the situation by claiming that he made the payment out of pocket. This would get Trump off the hook, if anyone believed Cohen’s bizarre claim. But Cohen had better hope his own story isn’t true, because he just confessed to a crime of his own.

Cohen is trying to insulate Trump by insisting that he made the $130,000 payout without Trump’s knowledge or involvement. But Congressman Ted Lieu, an Air Force JAG officer with a law degree, has sleuthed out that all Cohen has done is confess to having committed a crime. Here’s how Lieu spelled it out on Twitter: “Michael Cohen admits he paid $130k in hush money to Daniels during presidential campaign to cover up her affair with @realDonaldTrump. That smells illegal. Looks like a massive in-kind contribution.”

Lieu then added “Legal standard for fed election law is not whether a person pays from personal funds. An in-kind contribution is any ‘expenditure made by any person in cooperation, consultation or concert with, or at the request or suggestion of, a candidate’s campaign.’ Cohen is in big trouble.” In other words, Cohen’s desperation move didn’t even help Trump here, and instead it appears to have made things even worse.

At this point Michael Cohen’s only conceivable legal defense would be that he was lying when he claimed he made the payment out of pocket on his own. This is now an even bigger scandal. Cohen is going to need a lawyer of his own, and Donald Trump is going to need a better lawyer.