Michael Cohen was Trump’s personal lawyer and fixer for over a decade. Cohen pleaded guilty to eight counts of campaign finance violations and tax evasion regarding a payment of $130,000 in hush money to Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election, with whom Trump had an affair.

Expenditures in defense of a candidate’s political outcome can be considered campaign contributions, subject to laws that bar corporate donations and establish donation limits. After acting as an intermediary for the payment to Stormy Daniels, Cohen filed fake invoices to Trump’s company.

As part of Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections, Cohen’s home and office were raided in April 2018 by the FBI. In August 2018, Cohen pleaded guilty to 8 counts of tax evasion, bank fraud, and campaign finance violations. He later pleaded guilty to an additional count of lying to a Senate and House Intelligence Committees regarding the proposed Trump Hotel Moscow.

In February 2019, Cohen asserted that all he had done was at Trump’s direction. While his testimony was colored by his previous lie to Congress, Cohen claimed that he then only sought to tell the truth as he was no longer working to defend the President.

Last fall I pled guilty in federal court to felonies for the benefit of, at the direction of, and in coordination with Individual Number 1. And for the record, Individual Number 1 is President Donald J. Trump.

Cohen’s attorney, Lanny J. Davis, noted that Cohen had committed his felonies at the request of Trump to influence the election: “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. If those payments were a crime for Michael Cohen, then why wouldn’t they be a crime for Donald Trump?”

Trump said he never directed Cohen to do anything illegal.

Rudy Giuliani, who was added to Trump’s legal team, admitted in a Fox News interview that Trump repaid the money to Cohen. However, he defended it by saying it wasn’t campaign money, and so there was no campaign finance law violation on Trump’s behalf. He also indicated that Trump was aware of the payment from the beginning, though Trump had repeatedly denied any knowledge of Stormy Daniels or the $130,000 in hush money.

It’s not campaign money. No campaign finance violations…[it was] funneled through a law firm, and the President repaid it.

…everybody was nervous about this from the very beginning. I wasn’t. I knew how much money Donald Trump put into that campaign. I said $130,000? You’re gonna do a couple checks for $130,000. When I heard Cohen’s retainer of $35,000, when he was doing no work for the President, I said that’s how he’s repaying, that’s how, how he’s repaying it. With a little profit and a little margin for paying taxes for Michael.

[Trump] didn’t know about the specifics of it.

For pleading guilty to the following counts, Cohen was sentenced to 3 years in federal prison, along with fines, asset forfeiture, and disbarment:

• 5 counts of tax evasion
• 1 count of making false statements to a financial institution
• 1 count of willfully causing an unlawful corporate contribution
• 1 count of making an excessive campaign contribution at the request of a candidate or campaign
• 1 count of making false statements to a congressional committee

AP News – Cohen pleads guilty, implicates Trump in hush-money scheme
The New York Times – Prosecutors Say Trump Directed Illegal Payments During Campaign
The New York Times – Michael Cohen Says He Arranged Payments to Women at Trump’s Direction
The New York Times – Trump Improvises New Defense in Hush Money Payments
Wikipedia – Michael Cohen (lawyer)