The Atlantic

Michael Cohen Pays the Price for His ‘Blind Loyalty’ to Trump

The sentencing ended a saga that began with a dramatic FBI raid and led Cohen to implicate the president in criminal misconduct.
Source: Andrew Kelly / Reuters

President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison on Wednesday, just days after directly implicating Trump in a felony stemming from hush-money payments to two women made just weeks before the 2016 election.

The sentencing marked the culmination of a months-long saga that began in April with a dramatic FBI raid on Cohen’s home and office and ended with Trump’s most loyal lieutenant and fixer—who once said he would take a bullet for his boss—turning against the president and implicating him directly in criminal misconduct. In Manhattan federal court on Wednesday, Cohen apologized to his family and to “the people of the United States.”

“Today is the day that I am getting my freedom back,” he said in a prepared statement. “I have been living in a personal

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