Trump Urges Maximum Sentence for Lawyer Who Turned on Him

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump used his Twitter feed Monday to accuse his former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, of lying under oath and said he should receive the maximum jail sentence as he praised another former adviser, Roger Stone, for saying he would never testify against the president.

Trump’s latest Twitter fusillade came after Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about the duration of his work for the Trump Organization on a proposed, but never completed, Trump Tower project in Moscow.

In reality, Cohen testified, the work on the proposal did not end in January 2016, as he had claimed, but lasted until May 2016, when Trump clinched the Republican nomination for president. The charge was brought by special counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating possible collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russian officials interfering in the presidential election.

In his plea agreement, and in a pre-sentencing memo written by his lawyers in a separate federal case in the Southern District of New York, Cohen said that he had kept Trump updated about the project as he tried to expedite the proposal. During the early months of 2016, Trump had been publicly pushing for warmer relations with Russia, a position that might have benefited his business.

In the first Twitter post related to Cohen on Monday morning, Trump referred to the pre-sentencing memo.

“'Michael Cohen asks judge for no Prison Time.’ You mean he can do all of the TERRIBLE, unrelated to Trump, things having to do with fraud, big loans, Taxis, etc., and not serve a long prison term? He makes up stories to get a GREAT & ALREADY reduced deal for himself, and get his wife and father-in-law (who has the money?) off Scott Free. He lied for this outcome and should, in my opinion, serve a full and complete sentence,” he wrote in two tweets.

People close to Cohen have said he struck a plea deal in the federal court case, admitting to guilt in charges related to tax fraud, because prosecutors were threatening his family with charges. In that same case, Cohen pleaded guilty to a campaign finance charge stemming from his October 2016 payment to an adult-film actress who was threatening to speak publicly about an alleged affair with Trump.

Cohen has since spent more than 70 hours with investigators working with the Southern District, as well as Mueller’s team and the state attorney general of New York, who has an open inquiry into Trump’s use of his charitable foundation. He has emerged as one of the biggest threats to Trump’s presidency.

The president’s tweets could be read as trying to interfere in Cohen’s case as he prepares for his sentencing date on Dec. 12.

In another tweet, Trump addressed Stone, who is being investigated by Mueller’s team over whether he had advance knowledge of plans by the website WikiLeaks to release troves of emails stolen from Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Stone has denied any direct link to Julian Assange, who founded WikiLeaks, and has insisted he was told information by others or boasted that he knew more than he did.

Stone — who recently predicted that Trump would not seek a second term and would claim he had achieved what he wanted to in his first few years in office — has said he would not testify against Trump and has accused Mueller’s team of trying to force false confessions from witnesses.

“'I will never testify against Trump.’ This statement was recently made by Roger Stone, essentially stating that he will not be forced by a rogue and out of control prosecutor to make up lies and stories about ‘President Trump.’ Nice to know that some people still have ‘guts!'” Trump wrote.

It was unclear why Trump put quotations marks around his own name and title.

Mueller’s team has also been reviewing whether Trump’s tweets over the last 18 months were intended to influence witnesses in the case.