Michael Cohen pleads guilty to lying to Congress about Trump real estate project in Russia

FILE - In this Aug. 21, 2018, file photo, Michael Cohen leaves Federal court, in New York. Cohen, Republican President Donald Trump's former lawyer, has returned to the Democratic Party. Cohen attorney Lanny Davis said Thursday, Oct. 11 on Twitter that his client has changed his registration from Republican to Democrat. He says Cohen made the change to distance "himself from the values of the current" administration. The switch came on the eve of Friday's deadline for New Yorkers to register to vote in the November election. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, File)
FILE - In this Aug. 21, 2018, file photo, Michael Cohen leaves Federal court, in New York. Cohen, Republican President Donald Trump's former lawyer, has returned to the Democratic Party. Cohen attorney Lanny Davis said Thursday, Oct. 11 on Twitter that his client has changed his registration from Republican to Democrat. He says Cohen made the change to distance "himself from the values of the current" administration. The switch came on the eve of Friday's deadline for New Yorkers to register to vote in the November election. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, File)

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."

Among other lies, Cohen said he told Congress that all discussions of the Moscow Trump Tower project ended by January 2016, when they had actually continued until June of that year and that the President and Trump family members were privy to ongoing negotiations.

Trump, leaving the White House en route to Argentina for the annual G20 summit, slammed Cohen as a "weak person."

"What he's trying to do is get a reduced sentence," Trump said.

He added that "there would have been nothing wrong if I did do" the Moscow project.

Cohen's lawyer, Guy Petrillo, said he would give the court a letter outlining how his client has cooperated with Mueller's investigation.

In August, Cohen struck a deal with prosecutors from the Southern District of New York and pleaded guilty to eight counts of bank fraud, tax fraud and campaign finance violations in relation to payments made to keep a pair of women quiet about alleged affairs with Trump.

The 52-year-old "fixer" admitted that the payments were made "at direction of the candidate," implicating the President in a scheme to keep information that would have been harmful to his campaign from becoming public.

Months earlier, the FBI raided Cohen's Manhattan home, office and hotel room as part of a probe into his business dealings.

The relationship between the attorney, who up until June served as the Republican Party's deputy finance chairman, and the President has publicly soured since his initial plea.

Trump has since gone on the offensive against his former fixer, blasting him for "flipping" and thumbing out angry tweets and accusing him of making up stories "in order to get a 'deal.' "

"If anyone is looking for a good lawyer, I would strongly suggest that you don't retain the services of Michael Cohen!" Trump tweeted in August.

Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, now serving as the President's lawyer, claimed in July that Trump was unconcerned about what Cohen has to say to prosecutors "as long as he tells the truth."

However, Trump has spent the past year and a half attempting to discredit the Mueller investigation, labeling it a "hoax" and a "witch hunt" as a growing number of his former top aides and associates have been indicted and accepted plea deals.

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