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Trump’s Former ‘Fixer’ Reaches Plea Deal With Mueller. ABC: Testimony ‘Damaging’ To Trump

   DailyWire.com

Robert Mueller has successfully pressured another Donald Trump associate to agree to a plea deal. On Thursday, ABC reported that Michael Cohen, Trump’s former “fixer” who “flipped” on the president after the FBI raided his home and office in April, is expected to plead guilty to making false statements to Congress in return for some “valuable” testimony.

ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos tweeted out the breaking news Thursday morning and underscored that, along with the guilty plea, Cohen is expected to provide “dozens of hours of testimony potentially damaging to Pres Trump,” which the special counsel “values.”

“Michael Cohen, Pres Trump’s former personal attorney, reaches new plea deal with Mueller this morning,” wrote Stephanopoulos, a former Clinton advisor. “Expected to enter guilty plea for false statements to Congress coupled with dozens of hours of testimony potentially damaging to Pres Trump–Special Counsel values testimony.”

ABC reports that Cohen appeared in federal court in Manhattan Thursday and “entered a guilty plea for misstatements to Congress in closed-door testimony last year about his contacts with Russians during the presidential campaign.”

Promising to “put family and country first,” Cohen has agreed to fully cooperate with prosecutors. ABC provides more details:

Cohen’s earlier plea deal with federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York implicated President Trump in campaign finance felonies. Since then, Cohen has spent more than 70 hours in interviews with Mueller’s team. The questioning has focused on contacts with Russians by Trump associates during the campaign, Trump’s business ties to Russia, obstruction of justice and talk of possible pardons, sources familiar with the discussions have told ABC News.

On April 9, after receiving a referral from Mueller, the FBI raided the office, home and hotel room of Cohen. The New York Times reported at the time:

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan obtained the search warrant after receiving a referral from the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, according to Mr. Cohen’s lawyer, who called the search “completely inappropriate and unnecessary.” The search does not appear to be directly related to Mr. Mueller’s investigation, but likely resulted from information he had uncovered and gave to prosecutors in New York. “Today the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York executed a series of search warrants and seized the privileged communications between my client, Michael Cohen, and his clients,” said Stephen Ryan, his lawyer. “I have been advised by federal prosecutors that the New York action is, in part, a referral by the Office of Special Counsel, Robert Mueller.”

Trump responded to the raid by condemning it as “a real disgrace” and “an attack on our country.”

While Trump strongly condemned the targeting of Cohen, the relationship between the two quickly devolved. By August, Cohen’s celebrity lawyer Lanny Davis was teasing Cohen’s alleged “knowledge” about “certain subjects that should be of interest to the special counsel,” and stating that his client “is more than happy to tell the special counsel all that he knows” if Mueller gives him a good deal.

Among the things Cohen has “knowledge” about, Davis suggested, was information about “a conspiracy to collude and corrupt the American democracy system.”

“Not just about the obvious possibility of a conspiracy to collude and corrupt the American democracy system in the 2016 election, which the Trump Tower meeting was all about, but also knowledge about the computer crime of hacking and whether or not Mr. Trump knew ahead of time about that crime and even cheered it on,” said Davis.

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