Michael Cohen, right, President Donald Trump's former lawyer, arrives at federal court for his sentencing for dodging taxes, lying to Congress and violating campaign finance laws in New York on Wednesday,... (Associated Press) 
 
 Michael Cohen, right, President Donald Trump's former lawyer, arrives at federal court for his sentencing for dodging taxes, lying to Congress and violating campaign finance laws in New York on Wednesday, Dec. 12, 2018. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez) (Associated Press) 
 
 NEW YORK (AP) — Michael Cohen, a lawyer who made his career protecting President Donald Trump, is set to learn Wednesday whether his decision to cooperate with federal investigators will lessen his punishment for crimes including making illegal hush-money payments to two women during the 2016 campaign — a scandal that could damage Trump's presidency. 
 
 Cohen said nothing to reporters as he arrived at court for his sentencing, where U.S. District Judge William Pauley III is set to decide whether the attorney will get leniency or years in prison for campaign finance violations, tax evasion and lying to Congress about the president's past business dealings in Russia. 
 
 Under federal sentencing guidelines, Cohen, 52, stands to get about four years in prison, but his lawyers have argued for leniency. 
 
 Some of Cohen's crimes, they said, were motivated by overenthusiasm for Trump, rather than any nefarious intent. 
 
 He has pleaded guilty to misleading Congress about his work on a proposal to build a Trump skyscraper in Moscow, hiding the fact that he continued to speak with Russians about the proposal well into the presidential campaign. 
 
 Cohen also pleaded guilty in August to breaking campaign finance laws by helping orchestrate payments to silence former Playboy model Karen McDougal and adult film actress Stormy Daniels, who said they had sexual encounters with Trump while he was married. 
 
 Daniels' outspoken lawyer, Michael Avenatti, also turned up for Cohen's sentencing. Avenatti represented Daniels in a legal dispute with Cohen, in which she sought to be released from an agreement prohibiting her from talking about the alleged affair. Avenatti has bashed Cohen for months on cable television, saying Trump's ex-lawyer deserves to go to prison. 
 
 Meanwhile, Cohen looked relaxed as he sat in court awaiting the proceeding, occasionally looking at papers on the table in front of him. 
 
 For weeks, Cohen's legal strategy appeared to revolve around persuading the court that he is a reformed man who abandoned longtime friendships and gave up his livelihood when he decided to cut ties with the president and speak with federal investigators. Cohen's lawyers have said in court filings that their client could have stayed on the president's side and angled himself for a presidential pardon. 
 
 New York prosecutors have urged a judge to sentence Cohen to a substantial prison term, saying he'd failed to fully cooperate and overstated his helpfulness. 
 
 They've asked for only a slight reduction to his sentence based on his work with the office of special counsel Robert Mueller and prosecutors looking into the campaign finance violations in New York. 
 
 A probation-only sentence, they said, is unbefitting of "a man who knowingly sought to undermine core institutions of our democracy." 
 
 "While many Americans who desired a particular outcome to the election knocked on doors, toiled at phone banks, or found any number of other legal ways to make their voices heard, Cohen sought to influence the election from the shadows. He did so by orchestrating secret and illegal payments to silence two women who otherwise would have made public their alleged extramarital affairs" with Trump, prosecutors wrote. 
 
 Prosecutors said Cohen orchestrated payments to McDougal and Daniels at Trump's direction. 
 
 Trump, who insists the affairs never happened, said Monday in a tweet that the payments to the women were "a simple private transaction," not a campaign contribution. And if it was campaign contribution, the president said, Cohen is the one who should be held responsible. 
 
 "Lawyer's liability if he made a mistake, not me," Trump wrote, adding, "Cohen just trying to get his sentence reduced. WITCH HUNT!" 
 
 A sentence of hard time would leave Cohen with little to show for his decision to plead guilty, though experts said Wednesday's hearing might not be the last word on his punishment. 
 
 Cohen could have his sentence revisited if he strikes a deal with prosecutors in which he provides additional cooperation within a year of his sentence, said Michael J. Stern, a former federal prosecutor in Detroit and Los Angeles. 
 
 "Few things spark a defendant's renewed interest in cooperating faster than trading in a pair of custom Italian trousers for an off-the-rack orange jump suit," he said. 
 
 Annemarie McAvoy, a former federal prosecutor in Brooklyn, said prosecutors appear to be angry at Cohen for limiting his cooperation. 
 
 "It could be a tactic to try to break him like they've tried to do with (Paul) Manafort," McAvoy said, referring to Trump's former campaign chairman. "It kind of shows they're putting the screws to him. If they're not mad at him, he didn't give them what they wanted." 
 
 Cohen's transition from Trump's fixer-in-chief to felon has been head-spinning. 
 
 He once told an interviewer he would "take a bullet" for Trump. But facing prosecution for evading $1.4 million in taxes, Cohen pleaded guilty in August, pledged to cooperate with Mueller's investigation of Russian interference in the presidential election and changed his party registration from Republican to Democrat. 
 
 Judge Pauley, who was appointed to the federal bench by former President Bill Clinton, may allow Cohen to begin serving any prison term he receives at a later date. But legal experts said Cohen could also be taken into custody immediately. 
 
 "If I were advising him, I'd encourage him to bring his toothbrush to court," said Stern. 
 
 Cohen's lawyers have asked for no prison time, saying he has suffered enough already. 
 
 "The greatest punishment Michael has endured in the criminal process has been the shame and anxiety he feels daily from having subjected his family to the fallout from his case," his attorneys wrote in a court filing last month. "The media glare and intrusions on all of them, including his children, the regular hate correspondence and written and oral threats, the fact that he will lose his law license, the termination of business relationships by banks and insurers and the loss of friendships, are but some of this fallout." ||||| A lawyer representing Michael Cohen, the former longtime fixer and personal attorney for Donald Trump, says his client has information that would be “of interest” to special counsel Robert Mueller and that he would not accept any pardon from the president. 
 
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 “I can tell you it's my observation that what he knows, that he witnessed, will be of interest to the special counsel,” Cohen’s lawyer, Lanny Davis, told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos Wednesday on “Good Morning America.” 
 
 Cohen pleaded guilty Tuesday to eight counts that included campaign finance violations spawned from hush money agreements with two women, Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, who claim to have had affairs with Trump, which he has denied. Speaking to a packed federal courthouse in Manhattan, Cohen said he made those payments "in coordination and at the direction of a candidate for federal office," referring to then-candidate Donald Trump. 
 
 ABC News 
 
 On “Good Morning America,” Davis accused Trump of committing “a criminal act that corrupted our democracy” in directing Cohen to make those payments and said Cohen would not accept a pardon from President Trump, if offered one. 
 
 “Michael Cohen was directed … to do a criminal act,” Davis said on “Good Morning America,” adding, “It was not done by Donald Trump because he had affairs with two women, he did not want the news of those affairs to come out in the last two weeks of the campaign. That is a crime.” 
 
 In addition to the campaign finance violations, Cohen pleaded guilty to a slew of bank fraud and tax evasion charges related to his personal business dealings. 
 
 Shortly after Cohen's guilty plea, the president's attorney, Rudy Giuliani, maintained that Trump is not at fault, adding, "There is no allegation of any wrongdoing against the president in the government's charges against Mr. Cohen." 
 
 "It is clear that, as the prosecutor noted, Mr. Cohen's actions reflect a pattern of lies and dishonesty over a significant period of time,” Giuliani said. 
 
 On "Good Morning America," Davis said Cohen “will tell the truth to everybody who asks him about Mr. Trump,” though it was unclear whether Cohen has agreed to meet with federal investigators. 
 
 Cohen's stunning admission marked the end of a monthslong investigation into his personal business practices, the genesis of which can be tied back to Mueller's investigation into Russian meddling during the 2016 campaign. Mueller referred the case to New York's Southern District to investigate. 
 
 Cohen served as Trump's fixer and trusted confidant for years, solving the real estate tycoon's legal troubles and once famously boasting that he would "take a bullet" for the president. A gratified patron, Trump praised his personal attorney as a "fine person with a wonderful family." 
 
 But as Cohen's legal exposure developed, their relationship soured and arrived at a breaking point last month when Cohen told ABC News that he was prepared to "put family and country first," a suggestion that rocked the White House as speculation of Cohen's flipping on the president reached a fever pitch. 
 
 At a campaign rally in West Virginia on Tuesday night, the president made no mention of Cohen's guilty plea. 
 
 Cohen, who now faces the possibility of a lengthy prison sentence and substantial monetary forfeiture, is scheduled for sentencing Dec. 12. ||||| President Donald Trump praised Paul Manafort for going through with a trial rather than taking a plea deal that could potentially have involved him turning against Trump. | Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images Trump doesn't rule out pardoning Manafort 
 
 President Donald Trump on Wednesday refused to rule out pardoning his former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, who was convicted this week on eight counts of tax and bank fraud. 
 
 The president, who sat for an interview Wednesday with Fox News's "Fox & Friends," praised Manafort for going through with a trial rather than taking a plea deal that could potentially have involved him turning against Trump. 
 
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 "One of the reasons I respect Paul Manafort so much is he went through that trial. You know, they make up stories. People make up stories," Trump said. 
 
 Manafort had been charged with 18 counts of tax and bank fraud as part of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. A jury found Manafort guilty on eight counts, and U.S. District Court Judge T.S. Ellis declared a mistrial on the other 10 counts. Manafort also faces a second criminal trial, to begin next month in a federal court in Washington, on charges of money laundering, witness tampering and failing to register as a foreign agent. 
 
 Wary that the president could move to protect his former campaign chairman, congressional Democrats have been outspoken in recent days, warning the president against taking such a step. 
 
 Trump compared Manafort favorably to Michael Cohen, his former personal lawyer who pleaded guilty Tuesday to eight counts, including tax evasion, financial fraud and campaign-finance violations. In his guilty plea, Cohen implicated the president, telling the court he violated campaign-finance law "in coordination and at the direction of a candidate for federal office." 
 
 Asked directly whether he would grant a pardon to his former campaign chairman, the president did not deny the possibility. Instead, he said he has "great respect" for the legal morass Manafort has been through. 
 
 "I would say what he did, some of the charges they threw against him, every consultant, every lobbyist in Washington probably does," Trump said. 
 
 Asked at the Wednesday news briefing whether Trump was considering a pardon for Manafort, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said, "I am not aware of any conversations regarding that at all." 
 
 The president insisted in his Fox News interview that Manafort's guilty verdict and Cohen's plea do not implicate him, and that the wrongdoings of Cohen and Manafort had nothing to do with his campaign. 
 
 "I didn't know Manafort well. He wasn't with the campaign long. They got him on things totally unrelated to the campaign. By the way, they got Cohen on things totally unrelated to the campaign. I'm not involved. I wasn't charged with anything. People don't like to say that, I wasn't charged," Trump said. 
 
 The president had harsher words for Attorney General Jeff Sessions, complaining that the former Alabama senator has failed to root out what Trump said are partisan Democrats embedded in the Justice Department. Trump told Fox News that he only appointed Sessions because he was an "original supporter" on the Trump campaign. 
 
 Lamenting Sessions' decision to recuse himself from any investigation involving the 2016 campaign, a move that has sidelined him from Mueller's Russia probe, Trump did not rule out the possibility that he might fire Sessions or Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. 
 
 "I put an attorney general that never took control of the Justice Department, Jeff Sessions. Never took control of the Justice Department and it's sort of an incredible thing," Trump said. "He took the job and then he said, 'I'm going to recuse myself.' I said, 'What kind of a man is this?' And by the way, he was on the campaign. You know, the only reason I gave him the job was I felt loyalty."
– Michael Cohen pleaded guilty Thursday morning to lying to Congress about work he did on a Trump real estate deal in Russia. President Trump's former personal attorney made a surprise appearance in a New York courtroom to enter the plea, per the AP. He admitted to making false statements in 2017 to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence about a plan to build a Trump Tower in Moscow; no final deal was even made. In August, Cohen pleaded guilty to other federal charges involving his taxi businesses, bank fraud, and his campaign work for Trump. But as the New York Times notes, Thursday marks the first charges brought against Cohen by special counsel Robert Mueller. Cohen has been cooperating with Mueller's investigation since he made his first plea, and the new development suggests he's angling for a lighter sentence, per the Times. Trump himself, meanwhile, has been escalating his attacks on the Mueller inquiry of late. "Did you ever see an investigation more in search of a crime?" he tweeted Thursday, one of two tweets on the subject. (Mueller says Paul Manafort has been lying, not cooperating, after his own plea deal, and Trump says a pardon for Manafort is not "off the table.")