President Donald Trump broke his silence after his former personal attorney pled guilty in federal court to violating campaign finance law at his direction, in a Wednesday morning tweet.
If anyone is looking for a good lawyer, I would strongly suggest that you don’t retain the services of Michael Cohen!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 22, 2018
Cohen told the federal court that he acted for the purposes of influencing the election when he made payments to two women who were alleging an affair with Trump. Cohen, Trump, and the president’s legal team have previously maintained that the payments were made in a personal capacity to save face and had nothing to do with the 2016 presidential campaign.
The payments were made to former porn-star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who both claimed to have affairs with Trump in the mid-2000s. Prosecutors targeting Cohen told the court that the aim of the payments to Daniels and McDougal were made to hide his affairs.
Cohen’s guilty plea places Trump in the position of being an un-indicted co-conspirator in the campaign finance violation. This violation could prove politically precarious for the president with critics already advocating for his impeachment in Congress.