NEW YORK – Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney, pleaded guilty Thursday to making false statements to Congress about a scuttled Moscow Trump Tower project and his contacts with Russians during the presidential campaign.
Cohen made a surprise appearance in federal court in lower Manhattan Thursday morning, where he entered his plea as part of a deal with special counsel Robert Mueller in the ongoing federal investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
He admitted to making false statements in 2017 to the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence about plans to build a Trump Tower in Moscow and his communications with the Kremlin.
“I made these statements to be consistent with individual one’s political messaging and to be loyal to individual one,” Cohen said, noting that no one instructed him to mislead lawmakers.
He identified Trump by name as “individual one.”