It doesn't take a lawyer to know Donald Trump's longtime fixer Michael Cohen is in a boatload of trouble, but a J.D. sure is helpful to figuring out what kind of trouble. Former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti has a brief look in USA Today at Cohen's liabilities given what we know now. In other words, Mariotti's immediate assessment doesn't take into account what might stem from future revelations, such as where the several millions that flowed into his shell company Essential Consultants LLC eventually ended up or what Trump knew about the whole scheme.
But thus far, Cohen's main legal liabilities lie in the areas of bank fraud and campaign finance law.
The most explosive revelation was that $500,000 was paid to Cohen via the shell company by Columbus Nova, a New York investment firm linked to a Russian oligarch. (Columbus Nova confirmed the payment but denied wrongdoing.) The timing of the payments to the shell company — which began about three months after the $130,000 payment to Daniels — create potential liability for Cohen under campaign finance law.
It is illegal for a foreign national to make a contribution in connection with a United States election. If the payment to Daniels was related to the campaign, it's possible that the oligarch used Columbus Nova and Cohen's shell company to funnel a contribution to help Trump in a manner devised to escape detection. [...]
That isn't the biggest legal problem for Cohen raised by this week's news. The Avenatti summary listed several alleged false statements made by Cohen to First Republic Bank when he created the bank account for the shell company. While there are not enough facts in the summary to determine whether Avenatti's allegation that Cohen committed "bank fraud" is accurate, knowingly making false statements to a financial institution is usually an element of bank fraud.
Although Cohen is reportedly not registered as a lobbyist, few experts thus far seem to think he broke the law on that front given what we know about how much lobbying work he actually did (Novartis, for instance, claimed he ultimately did nothing more than cash a paycheck from them). Apparently, being somewhat lazy and exceedingly useless actually worked to Cohen’s advantage in this case. Mariotti also agrees with that preliminary assessment.
Cohen did fail to register as a lobbyist, but that is only a crime if he did so to purposely undermine the law, and there is an exception for individuals who spend less than 20% of their time lobbying.
What we know now could well be just the tip of the iceberg. But even with that, Cohen's best bet of minimizing jail time outside of cooperating with federal prosecutors would be a pardon from Trump. And as Mariotti notes, those prospects don’t look great either.
Given how carefully Trump has sought to distance himself from Cohen and his activities, it does not appear a pardon is forthcoming — which may mean a long and difficult road ahead for Cohen.