Cohen isn’t the first presidential lawyer to go to jail
by digby
… and it was for paying hush money too. From the NYT’s David Leonhardt’s newsletter:
This isn’t the first time the president’s lawyer is headed for jail. Herbert Kalmbach, Richard Nixon’s personal lawyer and one of the first people to come clean about Watergate, “received a prison sentence on June 17, 1974, exactly two years after the Watergate break-in, for funneling hush money to Watergate defendants,” Time Magazine’s Olivia Waxman notes. Two months later, Nixon resigned.
BY the way, our sleazy mafia Don Trump tweeted this, this morning, evidently trying to implicate Cohen’s family again:
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. Despite that many campaign finance lawyers have strongly……— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 13, 2018
….stated that I did nothing wrong with respect to campaign finance laws, if they even apply, because this was not campaign finance. Cohen was guilty on many charges unrelated to me, but he plead to two campaign charges which were not criminal and of which he probably was not…— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 13, 2018
….guilty even on a civil basis. Those charges were just agreed to by him in order to embarrass the president and get a much reduced prison sentence, which he did-including the fact that his family was temporarily let off the hook. As a lawyer, Michael has great liability to me!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 13, 2018
And then he screamed:
WITCH HUNT!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 13, 2018