Longtime Trump lawyer/fixer Michael Cohen reached a plea agreement Tuesday with federal prosecutors on bank and tax fraud charges and campaign finance violations. Cohen surrendered to the FBI and is due in federal court for a hearing at 4 PM ET.
The charges in the Southern District of New York relate to Cohen not paying enough taxes on his taxi medallions and inflating his assets on bank loan applications. The campaign finance charge stems from hush-money payments Cohen made to women for Donald Trump in advance of the 2016 election.
Before seeing the plea deal, the lawyer for one of those women, Michael Avenatti, told MSNBC that even if the charging documents do not include specifics about Cohen cooperating, he could still cooperate. "Regardless of whether the documentation today formally includes a cooperation agreement, that does not mean that there's not cooperation that's ongoing," Avenatti explained, "nor does it mean that there will not be significant cooperation going forward."
Avenatti said he had "zero doubt" that Cohen was cooperating on some level, a position that former Deputy Assistant Attorney General Tom Dupree agreed with completely on MSNBC.
"I find it very doubtful, almost zero percent, that the United States Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York would have entered this plea bargain with Cohen absent meaningful cooperation across the board," Dupree asserted, also in advance of seeing the actual documentation.
If Cohen does cooperate, that cooperation can extend beyond the SDNY investigation to include assisting special counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing Russia probe. One main point of interest for Mueller's team will be whether Cohen can confirm Trump knew in advance about Don Jr.'s Trump Tower meeting with a Kremlin-linked lawyer to get dirt on Hillary Clinton. Cohen has indicated that Trump did know.
Cohen also likely has information pertaining to whether Trump knowingly and intentionally violated campaign finance laws related to the hush-money payments Cohen made to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, with whom Trump allegedly had affairs. In July, Cohen released a recording of him and Trump discussing a payment to McDougal in advance of the 2016 election.
Stay tuned for further updates.