Trump goes on offensive following Cohen plea deal

The White House pushed back forcefully on Wednesday against suggestions that a plea deal struck by US president Donald Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen implicated Mr Trump in a crime.

"As the president has said, we've stated many times, he did nothing wrong. There are no charges against him," press secretary Sarah Sanders said at a White House briefing. "Just because Michael Cohen made a plea deal doesn't mean that that implicates the president on anything."

Mr Cohen on Tuesday pleaded guilty to eight criminal charges of tax evasion, bank fraud and campaign finance violations. He told a federal court in Manhattan that Mr Trump directed him to arrange payments ahead of the 2016 presidential election to silence two women who said they had affairs with Mr Trump.

In the wake of Mr Cohen's plea, Senate Democrats on Wednesday demanded that upcoming confirmation hearings for supreme court nominee Brett Kavanaugh be delayed, with some calling Mr Trump a "co-conspirator."

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Earlier, the president lashed out at Mr Cohen in a Twitter post by saying the campaign finance violations Mr Cohen pleaded guilty to in federal court in New York were not a crime – even though prosecutors and Mr Cohen agreed that they were. Mr Trump made the claim without offering any evidence.

At the same time, Mr Trump on Twitter praised his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who was convicted on Tuesday of multiple counts of fraud, as a "brave man" for not co-operating with federal authorities.

Fox News released excerpts of an interview conducted with Mr Trump on Wednesday in which the president said he knew of the payments made by Mr Cohen “later on” but did not elaborate.

After first denying that he knew anything about Mr Cohen's actions, Mr Trump earlier this year acknowledged he reimbursed Mr Cohen for payments he made in late 2016 to Stormy Daniels, an adult-film actress whose real name is Stephanie Clifford. Daniels has alleged she had a relationship with Mr Trump.

Audio recording

In July, CNN released an audio recording reportedly made by Mr Cohen that features the lawyer and Mr Trump in September 2016 discussing whether to buy the rights to the story of Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model who also has alleged an affair with Mr Trump.

The president has insisted he paid Mr Cohen out of personal funds and that the payments were not intended to benefit his campaign but to resolve a personal matter.

“They weren’t taken out of campaign finance. That’s a big thing,” Mr Trump said in the Fox interview, which will air on Thursday morning. “They didn’t come out of the campaign; they came from me.”

Mr Trump's critics have argued the case being made by the president that the payments to Ms Daniels and Ms McDougal were personal do not hold up given the timing – only weeks before the election.

Earlier on Wednesday Mr Cohen's lawyer Lanny Davis said his client had information that would be of interest to special counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating whether the 2016 Trump campaign conspired with Russia to influence the election. Mr Davis set up a website to collect donations for Mr Cohen's legal expenses.

Asked at the briefing if Mr Trump was concerned about what Mr Cohen might tell Mr Mueller, Ms Sanders replied: “I don’t think the president is concerned at all. He knows that he did nothing wrong and that there was no collusion.”

New York investigators on Wednesday issued a subpoena to Mr Cohen in connection with the state's criminal investigation of the Trump Foundation, a state official said.

Mr Trump has granted presidential pardons to conservative commentator Dinesh D'Souza and former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio but Mr Davis said his client would not accept one.

“Mr Cohen is not interested in being dirtied by a pardon from such a man,” Mr Davis told NPR.

Mr Cohen’s plea came as Manafort was found guilty on eight charges in a separate financial fraud trial in Alexandria, Virginia, stemming from a federal investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 US election and possible co-ordination with the Trump campaign.

In a morning tweet, Mr Trump said: “I feel very badly for Paul Manafort and his wonderful family. ‘Justice’ took a 12 year old tax case, among other things, applied tremendous pressure on him and, unlike Michael Cohen, he refused to ‘break’ - make up stories in order to get a ‘deal.’”

The Cohen and Manafort cases ratchet up political pressure on Mr Trump and fellow Republicans ahead of November elections in which Democrats are seeking to take control of Congress. – Reuters