‘Today Is the Day I Am Getting My Freedom Back’
In federal court on Wednesday, Donald Trump’s former lawyer and fixer sought to break free of the president as a judge sentenced him to prison.
NEW YORK — With his teary-eyed and grim-faced family arrayed behind him, Michael Cohen laid claim to his freedom in a federal courtroom here on Wednesday morning. Not from incarceration, of course—Donald Trump’s former longtime lawyer, fixer, and foot soldier knew he was soon headed to prison after he pleaded guilty to what a federal judge called “a veritable smorgasbord of fraudulent conduct.”
No, the 52-year-old Cohen was declaring his formal, surely irrevocable liberty from the clutches of the president of the United States.
“Today,” he told Judge William H. Pauley III in a deep, steady voice, “is the day
