Michael D. Cohen, President Trump’s former lawyer, made the extraordinary admission in court on Tuesday that Mr. Trump had directed him to arrange payments to two women during the 2016 campaign to keep them from speaking publicly about affairs they said they had with Mr. Trump.
Mr. Cohen acknowledged the illegal payments while pleading guilty to breaking campaign finance laws and other charges, a litany of crimes that revealed both his shadowy involvement in Mr. Trump’s circle and his own corrupt business dealings.
He told a judge in United States District Court in Manhattan that the payments to the women were made “in coordination with and at the direction of a candidate for federal office,” implicating the president in a federal crime.
“I participated in this conduct, which on my part took place in Manhattan, for the principal purpose of influencing the election” for president in 2016, Mr. Cohen said.
The plea represented a pivotal moment in the investigation into the president, and the scene in the Manhattan courtroom was striking. Mr. Cohen, a longtime lawyer for Mr. Trump — and loyal confidant — described in plain-spoken language how Mr. Trump worked with him to cover up a potential sex scandal that Mr. Trump feared would endanger his rising candidacy.
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The plea agreement does not call for Mr. Cohen to cooperate with federal prosecutors in Manhattan. Still, it does not preclude him from providing information to them later or to
the special counsel, who is examining the Trump campaign’s possible involvement in Russia’s interference in the 2016 campaign. If Mr. Cohen were to substantially assist the special counsel’s investigation, Mr. Mueller could recommend a reduction in his sentence.
Mr. Cohen had been the president’s longtime fixer, handling some of his most sensitive personal matters over a decade at the Trump Organization. He once said he would take a bullet for Mr. Trump.
As Mr. Cohen addressed the judge, admitting to the crimes he had committed, the packed courtroom remained silent. Even when Mr. Cohen made obvious references to Mr. Trump, referring to him as “the candidate” and “a candidate for federal office,” spectators seemed to listen raptly, with no gasps or audible reactions.
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Prosecutors left little doubt that A.M.I. Inc., owner of The National Enquirer, became a de facto campaign proxy for Mr. Cohen in his efforts on behalf of Mr. Trump.
According to court papers, the publisher agreed in August 2015, months before the first primaries, to look out for damaging stories about Mr. Trump and his alleged affairs with women during talks with Mr. Cohen and “one or more” members of Mr. Trump’s campaign.
The tabloid company agreed to identify those stories “so they could be purchased and their publication avoided,” the prosecutors said on Tuesday — an inverted role for a tabloid scandal sheet such as The Enquirer, which went on to savage Mr. Trump’s opponents while promoting and protecting him.
That deal led to the arrangement with Ms. McDougal, which was struck in August 2016. It only came together, prosecutors said, after Mr. Cohen promised A.M.I. it would be reimbursed for the McDougal payment.
But prosecutors also reported for the first time that A.M.I. was intimately involved in the arrangement with Ms. Clifford. The tabloid connected Mr. Cohen with the lawyer who had negotiated the McDougal contract, Keith Davidson. Mr. Davidson also had Ms. Clifford as a client and later hashed out the agreement for Ms. Clifford’s silence.
Prosecutors said in court papers that when Mr. Cohen initially failed to finalize the deal, an editor at A.M.I. — a likely reference to Dylan Howard, the company’s chief content officer — alerted Mr. Cohen that there was a risk that Ms. Clifford would sell her story to another media company, one that would publish it.