TheCable

Michael Cohen, US President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer, was sentenced to a total of three years in prison on Wednesday.

He was sentenced for his role in making hush-money payments to women to help Trump’s 2016 election campaign and lying to congress about a proposed Trump Tower project in Russia.

William Pauley, US district judge, in Manhattan sentenced Cohen to three years for the payments, which violated campaign finance law, and to two months for the false statements to Congress.

The two terms will run concurrently.

Cohen pleaded guilty to the campaign finance charge in August and to making false statements in November.

The judge gave Cohen until 6 March to report to jail at the Otisville prison in upstate New York.

In addition to the jail term, he was also ordered to forfeit nearly $2m (£1.6m).

As he left the court, he did not pause to speak to reporters.

Trump has acknowledged the payments despite denying the affairs, and called them a private transaction unrelated to his campaign.

The special counsel reached a plea deal with Cohen on one count of lying to congress given his co-operation with the Russia inquiry.

The president’s former lawyer admitted to making false statements to Congress about a Trump property deal in Russia during the 2016 election.

During the sentencing hearing on Wednesday, Cohen’s lawyer, Guy Petrillo, said the special counsel probe “is of utmost national significance, no less than seen 40 years ago in Watergate”, referring to the scandal that brought down Republican President Richard Nixon in 1974.

Cohen’s other convictions for tax evasion and bank fraud charges are unrelated to the president.