(Reuters) - An attorney for Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer who pleaded guilty in New York on Tuesday to campaign finance violations and other charges, said Trump directed Cohen to commit a crime.

“Today he stood up and testified under oath that Donald Trump directed him to commit a crime by making payments to two women for the principal purpose of influencing an election,” Cohen’s attorney Lanny Davis said in a statement.

“If those payments were a crime for Michael Cohen, then why wouldn’t they be a crime for Donald Trump?” Davis said.</s>Michael Cohen leaves a federal courthouse in New York City, on May 30, 2018.

Donald Trump's former personal lawyer and "fixer" Michael Cohen, has pleaded guilty to charges including campaign finance fraud stemming from hush money payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels and ex-Playboy model Karen McDougal.

The 51-year-old Cohen entered the plea in federal court in New York on Tuesday. The other charges involve bank fraud and income tax evasion.

As part of his plea agreement, Cohen agreed not to challenge any sentence from 46 to 63 months.

Cohen's plea follows months of scrutiny from federal investigations and a falling out with the president, whom he previously said he'd "take a bullet" for.

FBI raids in April sought bank records, communications with Trump's campaign and information on payments to Daniels and McDougal.

Both women claimed Trump had affairs with them, which he denies.

The deal comes after reports that federal investigators were looking into whether Cohen committed bank and tax fraud worth more than $20 million, according to a media report. The New York Times, citing anonymous sources, said authorities were focusing on loans obtained for taxi businesses owned by Cohen and his family.

Investigators were also considering whether Cohen had violated campaign finance and other laws when he made financial arrangements to pay women to stay silent about alleged affairs with then-candidate Trump back in 2016.

Daniels, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford, was paid $130,000 by Cohen. She has since filed a civil lawsuit to be released from a "hush" agreement over her affair.

Daniels' attorney, Michael Avenatti, said Tuesday's developments "will permit us to have the stay lifted in the civil case & should also permit us to proceed with an expedited deposition of Trump under oath about what he knew, when he knew it, and what he did about it."

Avenatti also seemed to taunt Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani.

"Buckle Up Buttercup," he wrote. "You and your client completely misplayed this.."

Cohen was also involved in an agreement to pay McDougal to remain quiet about her own affair with Trump. Last month, an audio recording of a conversation reportedly betweenTrump andCohen, about a payment to a former Playboy model was released.

Prosecutors had reportedly considered filing charges against Cohen by the end of August.

Cohen, who long served as Trump's fixer, has been under investigation for months. In April, federal investigators for the Southern District of New York seized roughly 4 million files from Cohen's home, business office and hotel room.

The investigation has strained the once close relationship between Trump and Cohen.

More: Report: Ex-Trump lawyer Michael Cohen investigated for bank and tax fraud of more than $20 million

More: Feds win access to records seized from ex-Trump lawyer Michael Cohen

More: Michael Cohen tapes: Here's what we know about the secret recordings</s>WASHINGTON – Michael Cohen‘s guilty plea implicating President Donald Trump in a crime reverberated across the political landscape Wednesday, with Republicans rejecting talk of impeachment without evidence of Russian collusion. Democrats steered clear of the word, too, and zeroed in instead on what they called a “cesspool” of corruption engulfing the White House.

The one-two punch ahead of the midterm elections – the plea from former Trump lawyer Cohen and the fraud conviction of one-time campaign chairman Paul Manafort – is presenting the biggest loyalty test yet for Republicans who have been reluctant to criticize the president. Democrats face their own challenge in trying to tamp down calls for impeachment for fear that will galvanize GOP voters in November.

Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell brushed past reporters Wednesday without answering questions about Cohen or the possibility that the lawyer’s accusations about an illegal campaign coverup are grounds for impeachment proceedings against Trump. GOP House Speaker Paul Ryan, who is away from Washington, had no direct response either.

READ MORE: Michael Cohen subpoenaed by investigators in Trump Foundation probe

Trump’s strongest supporters are taking the view that, absent evidence of collusion with Russia to influence the 2016 election, there is just no case for impeachment.

Jerry Falwell Jr., the president of Liberty University and a Trump confidant, shrugged off the legal developments.

“Anything short of the campaign actually conspiring with Russia to try to impact the election, anything short of that will just be background noise,” Falwell said.

Doug Deason, a Texas-based donor and major Trump supporter, said: “In no way, shape or form did we think we were hiring St. Trump to repair the morals of the country.”

WATCH: Cohen’s lawyer says client willing to cooperate fully with Robert Mueller

Even those few Republicans who have been willing to speak out about Trump are treading carefully in the wake of Cohen’s guilty plea.

“I don’t think I’ve witnessed anything like I’ve witnessed over the last year and a half. Probably, the American people haven’t in modern times,” said retiring Republican Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee. But he stopped short of passing further judgment on the Cohen case.

“I’m sure there’s going to be other revelations that come up,” he said, “and I think we ought to just let the process work.”

Cohen on Tuesday said Trump directed a hush-money scheme before the 2016 election to buy the silence of porn star Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal, both of whom said they had sexual relationships with Trump. Trump has accused Cohen of making up “stories in order to get a ‘deal”‘ from federal prosecutors.

READ MORE: Michael Cohen willing to cooperate with Russia probe, would refuse Trump’s pardon, says lawyer

The president defended the hush-money payments Wednesday, saying, incorrectly, that the effort outlined in Cohen’s guilty plea wasn’t “even a campaign violation.” Trump told Fox News in an interview set to air Thursday that the payments “didn’t come out of the campaign, and that’s big.”

The accusation from Cohen has inflamed public debate about impeachment. Democratic leaders have sought to downplay the possibility of impeachment ahead of the midterm elections, fearing overreach that could cause Republicans to rally around the president.

Democratic donor Tom Steyer’s Twitter feed Wednesday called for others to join his campaign to impeach the president. “How much more corruption do we need to see?” he tweeted.

Ben Wikler, Washington director for the liberal advocacy group MoveOn, said he wants Democrats in Congress to join organizations like his that have been demanding impeachment for several weeks.

WATCH: Lawyer for Cohen says Trump ‘as guilty’ for allegedly directing him to commit crime, may have information for Mueller

“Now that Trump’s personal lawyer has implicated him in a crime, not supporting impeachment feels like a dodge,” Wikler said. “Impeachment doesn’t have to be the core of your message to the electorate, but it’s not something you can bury your head in the sand and ignore.”

But Democratic leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi said that unless other information emerges, impeaching Trump is “not a priority” for Democrats if they regain control of the House this fall. Pelosi said she prefers to see Democrats work to ensure special counsel Robert Mueller can finish his investigation.

“If and when the information emerges about that, we’ll see,” Pelosi said Tuesday as the news about Cohen was unfolding.

READ MORE: Manafort and Cohen’s guilty verdicts could actually help Trump — here’s why

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer used the developments to press the Democrats’ case against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, saying Republicans should hit “pause” on their push toward confirmation.

He expressed concern about Kavanaugh’s unwillingness to indict a sitting president, as is Justice Department policy, or subpoena a president to testify. Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing is set for Sept. 4.

“This Republican Congress has done almost nothing to check this president,” Schumer said. “We cannot allow the Supreme Court to be captured as well.”

The House is on summer break for campaign season. The Senate is in session, trying to wrap up a rare August work period that GOP leaders had hoped would be invigorating. Instead, senators at the Capitol are finding themselves facing questions they often have no answers for.

Some Republican strategists are privately worried about the party’s prospects in November because of the scandals. Democrats see a similar opening in what Schumer has called “a cesspool around this president.”

READ MORE: Is Trump in trouble? The legal implications of the Manafort and Cohen cases

“I think we’re beyond the tip of the iceberg. We’re in the middle of the iceberg right now, given how many people so close to the president are on their way to jail,” said Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut.

“My hope is that Republicans don’t retreat into a corner. This is a moment where the future of the presidency is at stake. This isn’t about politics or point-scoring, so I’ll take my time to come to a conclusion. But I hope Republicans will also be willing to look at the facts and come to a non-political conclusion that’s best for the country.”</s>Michael Cohen, former lawyer to President Donald Trump, departs following his appearance in Federal Court on Tuesday, Aug. 21, 2018, in New York. Cohen, has pleaded guilty to charges including campaign finance fraud stemming from hush money payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels and ex-Playboy model Karen McDougal. less

Michael Cohen, former lawyer to President Donald Trump, departs following his appearance in Federal Court on Tuesday, Aug. 21, 2018, in New York. Cohen, has pleaded guilty to charges including campaign finance ... more

Michael Cohen, former lawyer to President Donald Trump, departs following his appearance in Federal Court on Tuesday, Aug. 21, 2018, in New York. Cohen, has pleaded guilty to charges including campaign finance fraud stemming from hush money payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels and ex-Playboy model Karen McDougal. less

Michael Cohen, former lawyer to President Donald Trump, departs following his appearance in Federal Court on Tuesday, Aug. 21, 2018, in New York. Cohen, has pleaded guilty to charges including campaign finance ... more

Michael Cohen, former personal lawyer to President Donald Trump, leaves federal court after reaching a plea agreement in New York, Tuesday, Aug. 21, 2018.

NEW YORK (AP) — What other dirt might Michael Cohen have on Donald Trump?

Cohen's lawyer says the president's former "fixer" has information "on certain subjects that should be of interest" to the special prosecutor beyond his allegations made while pleading guilty Tuesday that Trump directed him to make hush-money payments to fend off damage to his White House bid.

Cohen has been said to be willing to tell special counsel Robert Mueller that Trump knew in advance of a 2016 meeting at Trump Tower in which the Republican candidate's eldest son sought damaging information from a Russian lawyer about Hillary Clinton.

But his lawyer, Lanny Davis, on Wednesday hedged a suggestion he made on television Tuesday night that Cohen could tell Mueller about whether Trump was aware of and encouraged Russian hacking during the 2016 campaign before it became publicly known.

"It is my observation that what he knows will be of interest," Davis said during a battery of television interviews. "Whether Mr. Trump knew ahead of time will remain to be seen."

Cohen, who showed fierce loyalty as Trump's personal lawyer, said in court that Trump directed him to arrange payments of $130,000 to porn star Stormy Daniels and $150,000 to former Playboy model Karen McDougal to buy their silence about alleged affairs before the election. Trump denies the affairs.

Trump tweeted on Wednesday that the campaign finance violations Cohen pleaded guilty to "are not a crime." He told "Fox & Friends" that, because the payments came from him and not the campaign, it's "not even a campaign violation." Both claims are wrong.

Nothing made public so far from Cohen's criminal case indicates he has agreed to cooperate with prosecutors, but Davis said that was simply a "distinction without a difference." Cohen is intent on telling the truth to whoever asks him and is "more than happy" to tell Mueller all that he knows, Davis said, calling that pledge, "the functional equivalent of cooperation."

Cohen forged his new path amid months of scrutiny from federal investigations and a public falling-out with the president, for whom Cohen once said he would "take a bullet." But what compelled him to take a plea deal and potentially flip on Trump?

Cohen told confidants he was disappointed and angry that Trump and his team — namely his lawyer Rudy Giuliani — had repeatedly bashed his reputation and character.

Cohen suggested that the attacks helped pave the way for his guilty plea and possible cooperation, according to a person who has spoken to the lawyer in the last 24 hours but was not authorized to discuss private conversations and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

Davis made the claim during his media tour Wednesday that Trump's deference to Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki on July 16 was a "significant turning point" and that it galvanized Cohen's thinking that Trump was unsuitable to hold office.

But, that summit was about two weeks after Cohen made clear to ABC's George Stephanopoulos in an off-camera interview that he was putting his "family and country first" and wouldn't be a "punching bag as part of anyone's defense strategy."

Working out of a Trump Tower office next to his boss, Cohen likely has vast knowledge of the innerworkings of Trump's empire, his business dealings and his campaign. Federal agents in April seized more than 4 million items from his home, hotel room and office, including recordings of Trump and others.

Investigators from New York state's tax department entered the mix on Wednesday, subpoenaing Cohen to share what he knows about the Trump Foundation, the president's embattled charitable foundation.

Cohen, who turns 52 on Saturday, wiped away tears as he gazed out a courthouse window after pleading guilty on Tuesday. He is free now and allowed some limited travel. He could get about four to five years in prison at sentencing Dec. 12.

Believing that his arrest was imminent, Cohen turned himself in to the FBI because he wanted to spare his children the image of him being perp-walked in handcuffs, according to the person who spoke with Cohen.

Even as his legal fate approached, Cohen tried to project normalcy in recent days: he went on a family trip to Florida and he oversaw moving back into his upper East Side apartment after spending months in a nearby hotel after a water main break.

When the judge asked him if he had taken any drugs or alcohol in the past 24 hours, Cohen confessed: "Last night at dinner, I had a glass of Glenlivet 12 on the rocks."

It was the only moment of levity at an otherwise glum proceeding.

"Is it your custom to do that, sir?" the judge responded.

"No, your honor," Cohen said.

Tuesday night, hours after entering his guilty pleas, Cohen took his wife out to dinner.

Associated Press reporter David Klepper contributed from Albany, New York.

Follow Lemire at twitter.com/JonLemire and Sisak at twitter.com/mikesisak</s>WASHINGTON (CNN) — It is hard to imagine a historical parallel to the one-two blows that landed flush on the jaw of President Donald Trump Tuesday afternoon, with the nearly simultaneous announcements of Paul Manafort’s convictions and Michael Cohen’s guilty pleas.

Taken together, the developments represent a thunderous rebuttal by the criminal justice system on behalf of the rule of law and against the President’s attempts to demonize the Department of Justice and FBI.

Both proceedings pose serious legal trouble for the President, but the Cohen plea is the graver and more immediate risk. It put a target directly on the President’s back.

Cohen was charged with a series of crimes, including some of the same sort of bank fraud that ensnared Manafort. But it will be counts seven and eight that keep Trump and his lawyers up for many nights.

The conduct laid out in those counts deals directly with Trump’s efforts to stop Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal from speaking about their alleged affairs with him. Indeed, Trump’s involvement is partly spelled out in the indictment itself, even though the President was not named, following Justice Department policy.

If, as Cohen says, Trump not only knew about but directed Cohen’s conduct, it means that the President would have been nothing less than a co-conspirator in a federal crime. And this crime, far from concerning long past financial misdeeds, would be a felony that then-candidate Trump committed precisely in order to secure election. It is hard to think of a more prototypical high crime or misdemeanor.

More importantly, the Cohen guilty plea anticipates a process, which already has begun, in which Cohen tells what he knows about those crimes, and probably others, to investigators working for the special counsel Robert Mueller, as well as to prosecutors from the Southern District of New York, where the case is pending.

Typically a criminal defendant would already have provided full information to the government before entering a plea. That didn’t happen here. It appears as if the Southern District was dissatisfied with the progress of talks and ready to bring charges last week, prompting Cohen to move quickly into an open-book posture.

SDNY, for its part, is able to eliminate any concern about bringing charges too close to an election. And given the likely credibility and trust between SDNY and Cohen’s excellent lawyer, Guy Petrillo, a former Criminal Division chief in that office, the parties probably felt sufficiently comfortable with entering the plea now and continuing the cooperation.

The eventual sentence Cohen gets for the crimes to which he pleaded guilty today — which without cooperation looks to be in the six to eight-year range, plenty long for the father of school-age children — will depend on the information he is able to provide.

And, of course, since the charges are pending in New York, and not with the Mueller probe, Trump is essentially powerless to try to fire his way out of the mess. No matter what action he takes against Mueller, the case against Cohen remains.

He could pardon Cohen, a move probably made much more politically difficult by the conviction of Manafort; it seems quite a stretch to think that he would pardon both. But even a pardon of Cohen will likely not keep Cohen’s information about Trump’s involvement from coming to light, once he provides it to the federal prosecutors.

That is because he can be immunized by state authorities if they bring charges against him (i.e. they could promise not to prosecute him), and without the possibility of criminal liability, he would lose Fifth Amendment protections and could be compelled to testify. And any lies he might tell in that testimony — i.e any material variations from the account he provides to the SDNY — would expose him to perjury.

Deputy US Attorney Robert Khuzami ended his remarks announcing Cohen pleas with an unusual paean to the rule of law and the notion that the criminal justice system stands at the ready to prosecute wrongdoers without fear of favor.

The immediate subject of the remarks was Cohen, but it was a barely concealed reference to the President of the United States, and his offensive campaign to put himself above the law and demonize the criminal justice system. History may mark today as the day that campaign began to crumble.</s>The attorney for Michael Cohen said Tuesday night that his client has information that would bolster special counsel Robert Mueller‘s investigation.

“I do know,” attorney Lanny Davis told CNN’s Don Lemon, “Michael Cohen has information that would be of interest to Mr. Mueller in his probe of a conspiracy to corrupt American democracy.”

Davis also said: “There is no doubt that Donald Trump committed a crime and, more than that, a cover-up of the crime. Because he did not want to write the check to Stormy Daniels.”

Davis was speaking hours after Cohen had entered a guilty plea in Manhattan, admitting to violating campaign finance laws with actions taken on behalf of Trump during the 2016 campaign season. “I participated in the conduct for the purposes of influencing the election,” Cohen said about the payments made to Daniels and Karen McDougal.

Davis said Cohen felt “liberated” in the aftermath of his admission, which came at almost the same time former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort was convicted of eight charges in a Virginia courtroom.

“Patriotism and love of country caused him to recognize the danger of this particular President, his lack of suitability to be President of the United States,” Davis said of Cohen.

Davis, 72, served as special counsel to President Bill Clinton from 1996 to 1998 during the height of the Monica Lewinsky scandal and the subsequent impeachment probe.

Read this next: Facebook removes hundreds of accounts tied to Iran, Russia</s>"Obviously it's not good for Trump," Sol Wisenberg, who conducted grand jury questioning of President Bill Clinton during the Whitewater investigation, said of Cohen plea bargain.

"I'm assuming he's not going to be indicted because he's a sitting president, Wisenberg added. "But it leads him closer to ultimate impeachment proceedings, particularly if the Democrats take back the House."

The Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, which provides legal advice and guidance to executive branch agencies, has held that a president cannot be indicted while in office. Trump's lawyers have said that Mueller plans to adhere to that guidance, though Mueller's office has never confirmed that. There would presumably be no bar against charging a president after he leaves the White House.

Laurie Levenson, a former federal prosecutor and professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, noted that the deal does not require Cohen to co-operate, but does not preclude it from happening, which should be worrying to the president and his allies.

"What it shows is that the people close to the president have criminal exposure and it may mean they don't need Cohen to co-operate," she said.

Levenson argued that the deal also knocks back the argument that the investigations swirling around Trump are a "witch hunt."

"No longer can you say Mueller is on a witch hunt when you have his own lawyer pleading guilty to things that were designed to impact the election," she said.

Mueller's team is looking into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The team referred the case involving Cohen's financial dealings to federal prosecutors in Manhattan.

Before the election, Cohen had been a trusted member of the Trump organization, working out of an office in Trump Tower next to one used by his boss.

He raised millions for Trump's campaign and, after being interviewed by the House Intelligence Committee last year, told Vanity Fair that Trump had no part in the suspected Russian conspiracy to tamper with the election.

The president's initial support for Cohen after the raid soon degenerated into a public feud, prompting speculation that, to save himself, Cohen might be willing to tell prosecutors some of the secrets he helped Trump keep.

When Cohen's team produced a recording he had made of Trump discussing one of the hush-money payments, Trump tweeted: "What kind of lawyer would tape a client? So sad!"

Associated Press writer Catherine Lucey in Washington contributed to this report. Lemire reported from Washington.

By Larry Neumeister And Jonathan Lemire, The Associated Press</s>President Donald Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen is in plea talks with the U.S. Attorneys office in Manhattan. Cohen has been under investigation him for alleged bank fraud, tax fraud and campaign finance violations. A deal could come as early as end of day Tuesday, NBC News reported first.

Earlier this year, it was revealed the FBI had been keeping an eye on Cohen, monitoring his phone log and raiding his office and home. In early April, FBI executed a no-knock raid on Cohen’s office and home. Trump called it “a disgraceful situation,” adding, “I have this witch hunt constantly going on,” and complaining it’s “an attack on our country…what we all stand for.”

Among the things seized were records of payment to porn star Stormy Daniels shortly before the 2016 presidential election. Daniels claims she had an affair with Trump more than a decade ago.

In July, Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani told CNN the FBI is in possession of a pre-election recording between Trump and Cohen in which the two men talked about payment to a former Playboy bunny Karen McDougal, who claims she had a months-long affair with Trump.

Today’s news of possible plea deal comes one day after AP reported Cohen could be charged by end of this month.

Cohen attorney Lanny Davis recently told Politico he has been reaching out regularly over the past few months to John Dean, the former White House counsel who helped bring down the Richard Nixon presidency.

“I reached out to my old friend John Dean because of what he went through with Watergate, and I saw some parallels to what Michael Cohen is experiencing. I wanted to gain from John’s wisdom,” Davis told Politico.

“I certainly don’t want to raise expectations that Mr. Cohen has anything like the level of deep involvement and detailed knowledge that John Dean had in the Nixon White House as a witness to Nixon’s crimes, but I did see some similarities and wanted to learn from what John went through.”</s>Politics usually takes a summer vacation in August. But not during the Trump administration.

On Aug. 21, Michael Cohen, who until recently was President Trump’s long-time personal lawyer, surrendered to federal prosecutors in Manhattan after months of investigation into tax evasion and other crimes dating back to 2011.

Cohen pleaded guilty to violating a variety of laws, including two United States campaign finance laws: a ban on corporate contributions to candidates for federal office and the limit on individual campaign contributions.

The charges could land Cohen up to 65 years in jail, but his deal with prosecutors is likely to knock his sentence down to about five years. It may also have serious repercussions for President Donald Trump.

The United States government first began regulating money in elections in 1907 with the Tillman Act, which today still bars corporations from donating to political candidates.

Cohen broke that law when he, according to the criminal information filed in court, “caused” American Media Inc. – owner of the tabloid National Inquirer – to pay former Playboy playmate Karen McDougal US$150,000 to stay quiet about her alleged affair with Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential race.

American Media Inc. also likely violated the Tillman Act with this payment, but prosecutors have not yet indicted individuals there.

The Tillman Act was inspired by a 1904 election scandal in which New York insurance companies secretly gave their policy holders’ money to the Republican Party to help Theodore Roosevelt get elected president.

After the news broke that illicit funds had helped finance his campaign, Roosevelt – by then the sitting president – addressed Congress, decrying the dangers of corporate money in American democracy.

Calling for “vigorous measures,” Roosevelt said the nation must “protect the integrity of the elections of its own officials” because there was “no enemy of free government more dangerous and none so insidious” as corporate financing.

Congress eventually agreed with him. For the past century, the Tillman Act has banned corporations from influencing elections by directly donating to federal candidates like Donald Trump.

The second campaign finance law Cohen violated, the individual contribution limit, also emerged from political scandal – a pattern I’ve observed in my years studying U.S. campaign finance law.

Since 1974 the United States has capped the amount a person can contribute to a presidential candidate in a single campaign.

When Cohen gave $130,000 to the adult film actress Stormy Daniels in October 2016 in exchange for her silence about an alleged affair with Trump, he exceeded the current $2,700 limit.

The money, which Cohen got from a fraudulently obtained home equity line of credit – a separate crime – is considered a campaign contribution because, as Cohen recently told a federal judge in New York, it was paid “for the principle purpose of influencing the election.”

President Richard Nixon’s Committee to Re-Elect the President – the campaign committee known as “CREEP” – used its money to pay the Republican operatives who broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate Building in Washington, D.C. during the 1972 presidential race.

CREEP had both illegal and legal campaign funds in its coffers. The illegal moneys included sizable gifts from donors who wanted Nixon to appoint them to coveted foreign ambassadorships, a practice known to both Republican and Democratic presidents.

The legal contributions to Nixon’s campaign included large contributions from wealthy donors who wanted to wield other forms of influence in the White House.

At the president’s instruction, his aides and friends solicited secret $100,000 donations from such leaders of industry as billionaire Howard Hughes and agribusiness titan Dwayne Andreas. Sometimes the money was “contributed” to Nixon’s campaign in envelopes of cash delivered to the Oval Office.

After Watergate exposed these campaign practices, the public responded with revulsion. One out every four letters sent to Congress was from Americans demanding stronger rules governing money in politics. The response was the 1974 Federal Election Campaign Act.

This bipartisan reform created the Federal Election Commission, which enforces campaign finance laws, and required federal candidates, political action committees, parties and independent political spenders to disclose their political spending. It also limited maximum individual campaign contributions to $1,000.

A 2002 bipartisan reform of the act raised that amount to $2,000. In 2016 the contribution cap increased to $2,700 to account for inflation.

What Cohen’s crimes mean for Trump

Despite President Trump and his legal team’s claims to the contrary, these two campaign finance violations are crimes.

When he pleaded guilty, Cohen also testified under oath that he committed the felonies “in coordination and at the direction of a candidate for federal office.”

If true, these admissions mean President Trump took part in Cohen’s crimes.

So far, this is not new territory for the country. President Nixon was also found to be what’s called an “unindicted co-conspirator” in the Watergate cover-up, meaning he committed crimes but was not charged for them.

Nixon resigned from office before Congress could formally impeach him. He was pardoned by President Gerald Ford, so the Department of Justice never had to face the constitutional crisis of prosecuting a sitting president.

Both Trump and White House officials have repeatedly denied responsibility for Cohen’s criminal acts. This leaves Special Counsel Robert Mueller and other prosecutors in a quandary about how to proceed with these campaign finance violations.

Like Nixon, the president of the United States may now be an unindicted co-conspirator in felonies committed by his lawyer. But, so far, Trump shows no signs of resigning.

By Ciara C Torres-Spelliscy, Leroy Highbaugh Sr. Research Chair and Professor of Law, Stetson University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.</s>Donald Trump has accused his former lawyer Michael Cohen of lying under pressure of prosecution as his White House grappled with allegations that the president had orchestrated a campaign cover-up to buy the silence of two women who claimed he had affairs with them.

Confronting mounting legal and political threats, Mr Trump tweeted to accuse Cohen of making up “stories in order to get a ‘deal'” from federal prosecutors.

Cohen pleaded guilty on Tuesday to eight charges, including campaign finance violations that he said he carried out in coordination with Mr Trump.

At a White House briefing, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders insisted at least seven times that Mr Trump had done nothing wrong and was not the subject of criminal charges.
• David Pratt: Donald Trump is under domestic political pressure like never before and the dirt is beginning to stick

She referred substantive questions to the president’s personal counsel Rudy Giuliani, who was at a golf course in Scotland.

Mr Trump himself publicly denied wrongdoing, sitting down with his favoured programme Fox & Friends for an interview set to air on Thursday.

In the interview, he argued, incorrectly, that the hush-money payouts were not “even a campaign violation” because he subsequently reimbursed Cohen for the payments personally instead of with campaign funds.

Federal law restricts how much individuals can donate to a campaign, bars corporations from making direct contributions and requires the disclosure of transactions.

Cohen had said on Tuesday he secretly used shell companies to make payments used to silence former Playboy model Karen McDougal and adult-film actress Stormy Daniels for the purpose of influencing the 2016 election.

Mr Trump has insisted that he only found out about the payments after they were made, despite the release of a September 2016 taped conversation in which Mr Trump and Cohen can be heard discussing a deal to pay Ms McDougal for her story of a 2006 affair she says she had with Mr Trump.
• Alison Rowat: Teflon Don no more as Trump enters stickiest period in office

The White House denied the president had lied, with Ms Sanders calling the assertion “ridiculous”. Yet she offered no explanation for Mr Trump’s shifting accounts.

As Mr Trump vented his frustration, White House aides sought to project a sense of calm.

West Wing staffers absorbed near-simultaneous announcements on Tuesday of the Cohen plea deal and the conviction of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort on financial charges.

Manafort faces trial on separate charges in September in the District of Columbia that include acting as a foreign agent.

Federal prosecutors raided Cohen’s offices months ago — but Mr Trump and his allies were caught off-guard when he also pleaded guilty to campaign finance crimes, which, for the first time, took the swirling criminal probes directly to the president.

Both cases resulted, at least in part, from the work of special counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating Russia’s attempts to sway voters in the 2016 election.

“The only thing that I have done wrong,” Mr Trump tweeted late on Wednesday, “is to win an election that was expected to be won by Crooked Hillary Clinton and the Democrats. The problem is, they forgot to campaign in numerous states!”
• David Pratt: Donald Trump is under domestic political pressure like never before and the dirt is beginning to stick

Meanwhile, Cohen’s lawyer, Lanny Davis, said on Wednesday that Cohen has information “that would be of interest” to the special counsel.

“There are subjects that Michael Cohen could address that would be of interest to the special counsel,” Mr Davis said in a series of television interviews.

Mr Davis also said Cohen is not looking for a presidential pardon.

Manafort, Mr Trump wrote, had “tremendous pressure on him and, unlike Michael Cohen, he refused to ‘break’.”

Ms Sanders said the matter of a pardon for Manafort had not been discussed.
The lawyer of Michael Cohen, ex-lawyer of U.S. President Donald Trump who pleaded guilty to eight felonies a day prior, says his client would refuse to accept a presidential pardon.