December 13, 2018

Trump Denies Directing Cohen to “Break the Law”

“Michael has great liability to me!”

CaptionWang Ying/ZUMA

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President Donald Trump denied on Thursday having directed his former personal attorney Michael Cohen to “break the law.” The president’s statements come a day after Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison.

Trump has come under scrutiny for allegedly directing Cohen to make hush-money payments during the 2016 election to silence women about their alleged affairs with the then-presidential candidate. In an apparent attempt to further shield himself from mounting legal troubles, Trump on Thursday claimed that the payments did not violate campaign finance laws. He also claimed that Cohen made statements implicating the president in order to “embarrass” him and receive a more lenient sentence.

Trump’s tweets directly challenge federal prosecutors, who in a court filing last week said Cohen arranged the payments “at the direction” of Trump in violation of campaign finance laws. They also contradict Trump’s previous public statements professing to have no knowledge of the payments.

Trump has yet to comment on the explosive admission from American Media Inc.—the parent company of the National Enquirer—that it paid $150,000 to suppress a damaging story about the president and “prevent it from influencing the election.”

On Thursday, NBC News reported that Trump has privately expressed increasing fear over the prospect of impeachment.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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