NEW YORK _ The fixer is in.
Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump's former personal attorney, pleaded guilty to a laundry list of charges in Manhattan Federal Court on Tuesday _ including working at Trump's "direction" to pay off two women who say they had sex with him over a decade ago.
The stunning development implicates the president in committing campaign finance crimes by authorizing payments to porn star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal in exchange for their silence about the alleged trysts.
"What he did was he worked to pay money to silence two women who had information that he believed would be detrimental to the 2016 campaign, to the candidate and the campaign," deputy U.S. Attorney Robert Khuzami said after the hearing.
Both payments, Cohen admitted, were made "for the principal purpose of influencing" the 2016 presidential election.
The hush deal with McDougal was coordinated with Trump-boosting tabloid National Enquirer, he added.
Wearing a dark suit and a gold-colored tie, Cohen winked at reporters and signed papers before informing Judge William Pauley of his guilty plea on eight counts related to the campaign finance violations, bank fraud and tax evasion.
Cohen said he had a glass of Glenlivet scotch on the rocks Monday night, but that he was now sober and fully aware of his actions.
Federal guidelines recommend he face a sentence no greater than five years and three months in prison.
The 51-year-old Long Island native walked out of the courthouse on a $500,000 bond and will be sentenced on Dec. 12. Throngs of protesters shouted "lock him up!" as Cohen ducked into an SUV and peeled off.
"These are very serious charges and reflect a pattern of lies and dishonesty," Khuzami told reporters outside the courthouse. "For that he's going to pay a very, very serious price."
The self-described "fixer," long considered Trump's personal pit bull, boasted last year he'd take a bullet for the president.
But Cohen's loyalty has been tested since April 9, when FBI agents raided his Manhattan office and residences, seizing more than 4 million files.
The investigation into Cohen was referred to the U.S. Attorney's office for the Southern District of New York by special counsel Robert Mueller.
Cohen is not cooperating with federal authorities as part of his plea deal, but experts said there's still a chance he could cooperate with Mueller's investigators, who are looking into possible collusion between Trump's campaign and the Russian government to influence the 2016 election.
"He would have to show evidence they don't already have since the Southern District of New York was no doubt consulting with Mueller's office before this," Renato Mariotti, a former federal prosecutor in Illinois specializing in white collar crimes, told The New York Daily News.
The April raids sent shockwaves through the White House. Gradually, Cohen and Trump distanced themselves from each other through statements in the media as their relationship publicly soured.
Cohen later said his loyalty was to his family and country, leading to speculation that he may cooperate with investigators.
Cohen's attorney, Lanny Davis, issued a blistering statement after Tuesday's development.
"Today (Cohen) stood up and testified under oath that Donald Trump directed him to commit a crime by making payments to two women for the principal purpose of influencing an election," Davis said. "If those payments were a crime for Michael Cohen, then why wouldn't they be a crime for Donald Trump?"
Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, now serving as Trump's primary mouthpiece in the Russia investigation, disputed Davis' claim in a statement of his own.
"There is no allegation of any wrongdoing against the president in the government's charges against Mr. Cohen," Giuliani said.
The Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, which provides legal advice and guidance to executive branch agencies, has held that a president cannot be indicted while in office.
Trump dodged questions from reporters about Cohen after arriving in West Virginia Tuesday evening for a rally.
Giuliani's claim stands in sharp contrast to the allegations outlined in Cohen's plea.
Prosecutors say Cohen submitted bogus invoices to the Trump Organization to be reimbursed for his $130,000 payment to Daniels and $150,000 payment to McDougal.
Cohen said in court the hush payments were done "in coordination" with Trump, potentially opening the president as well as his namesake business empire up to further prosecution.
Daniels claims she had sex with Trump in 2006. Trump denies the affair, but has admitted he reimbursed Cohen for the payment.
Daniels' lawyer, Michael Avenatti tweeted, "We are going to end this dumpster fire of a presidency one way or another."
Khuzami said that in addition to the campaign finance violations, Cohen failed to report more than $4 million in income between 2012 and 2016, including about $2.5 million from interest payments on a personal loan and $1.3 million from his taxi medallion holdings.
Cohen also lied to a bank by failing to disclose more than $14 million in debt and obtaining a $500,000 home equity line of credit he wasn't entitled to, Khuzami said.
Prosecutors said during a hearing after the April 9 raid that they had been investigating Cohen for months.
Cohen initially argued that much of the material was protected by attorney-client privilege and not fair game for prosecutors _ and the president backed him up.
Trump blasted the raid as "a witch hunt" an assault on attorney-client privilege and a politically motivated attack by biased agents embedded in the FBI.
But a protracted review process overseen by a retired judge found that only a tiny fraction of the items seized in the raid were privileged.
Cohen played it cool in the days following the raid, chomping on cigars in public and frequenting high end restaurants across Manhattan with friends.
But, as the investigation heated up, the former fixer began making public statements at odds with Trump's views on a variety of topics and scrubbed mentions of the president from his social media accounts.
Tensions came to a head after it was revealed Cohen had secretly recorded Trump talking about McDougal, the former Playboy playmate who also says she had sex with Trump in 2006.
"Inconceivable that a lawyer would tape a client _ totally unheard of & perhaps illegal," Trump tweeted on July 21. "The good news is that your favorite President did nothing wrong!"
Jens Ohlin, the Vice Dean of Cornell University's Law School, begged to differ.
"Trump is now guilty not only of violating federal campaign finance law but also the federal conspiracy statute," Ohlin told the Daily News. "If he were anyone else, he'd be indicted right away. But I suspect he'll be listed as an unindicted co-conspirator, and this will clearly be a focus of Mueller's report. Hard to call this a witch-hunt now."
