Donald Trump Says He Never Ordered Michael Cohen To Do Anything Illegal, Blames Lawyer If Law Was Broken

President Donald Trump denied telling his former lawyer Michael Cohen to perform any illegal acts, claiming that it’s Cohen’s responsibility if he broke the law.

Trump tweeted out just a day after his former attorney was sentenced to three years in prison that he had nothing to do with Cohen’s decision to turn a blind eye on the law in his behalf, according to Business Insider.

“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 U.S. president said.

Michael Cohen received his sentence on Wednesday for a series of crimes performed while he was still working for the president, claiming he did so “out of blind loyalty” to Trump, and that he felt a “duty” to cover for his “dirty deeds.” The attorney told the court he had been living “in a personal and mental incarceration” ever since he accepted to work for Donald Trump, whose “business acumen” he reportedly admired.

Cohen’s own lawyer, Guy Petrillo, said during the sentencing that his client had been brave enough to come forward “to offer evidence against the most powerful person in our country.” Moreover, his adviser Lanny Davis also said Cohen would be willing to “state publicly” everything he knows about Trump.

Michal Cohen was found guilty of having paid hush money to two different women who claimed they had an affair with Trump, one of them being adult movie star Stormy Daniels, and also of having lied about plans to build a Trump Tower in Moscow, Russia. He implicated the president in the campaign finance allegations, admitting that he made the hush money payments on Trump’s behalf at the height of his 2016 presidential election.

The U.S. president said in his tweets that his former lawyer had been charged on several counts unrelated to him, and added that Cohen had pleaded guilty to the two “campaign charges” just to embarrass him and get a “much reduced prison sentence,” insisting that the charges were not of a criminal nature.

“As a lawyer, Michael has great liability to me!” Trump said.

Donald Trump and Michael Cohen once shared a very close relationship, but that has ended since the attorney was indicted in the Russia investigation. The president even deemed Cohen a “liar” before he was sentenced.

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