Michael Cohen is scheduled to be sentenced by US District Judge William Pauley in New York City on December 12 after his guilty plea to charges including campaign finance fraud and lying to Congress. As noted in this prior post, late last Friday, Cohen's lawyers filed this 30-page sentencing memorandum making a plea for leniency and a sentence of "time-served and restitution to the IRS." Today it was time for federal prosecutors to weigh in, and the Acting US Attorney for the Southern District of New York has now delivered this 40-page government sentencing memorandum making a case for a "substantial prison term." Here is this latest filing's preliminary statement:
Defendant Michael Cohen is scheduled to be sentenced on December 12, 2018. The United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York (the “Office”) respectfully submits this memorandum in connection with that sentencing and in response to the defendant’s sentencing memorandum dated November 30, 2018 (“Def. Mem.”).
Cohen, an attorney and businessman, committed four distinct federal crimes over a period of several years. He was motivated to do so by personal greed, and repeatedly used his power and influence for deceptive ends. Now he seeks extraordinary leniency — a sentence of no jail time — based principally on his rose-colored view of the seriousness of the crimes; his claims to a sympathetic personal history; and his provision of certain information to law enforcement. But the crimes committed by Cohen were more serious than his submission allows and were marked by a pattern of deception that permeated his professional life (and was evidently hidden from the friends and family members who wrote on his behalf).
Cohen did provide information to law enforcement, including information that assisted the Special Counsel’s Office (“SCO”) in ongoing matters, as described in the SCO’s memorandum to the Court, and the Office agrees that this is a factor to be considered by the Court pursuant to Title 18, United States Code, Section 3553(a). But Cohen’s description of those efforts is overstated in some respects and incomplete in others. To be clear: Cohen does not have a cooperation agreement and is not receiving a Section 5K1.1 letter either from this Office or the SCO, and therefore is not properly described as a “cooperating witness,” as that term is commonly used in this District.
As set forth in the Probation Department’s Presentence Investigation Report (“PSR”), the applicable United States Sentencing Guidelines (“Guidelines”) range is 51 to 63 months’ imprisonment. This range reflects Cohen’s extensive, deliberate, and serious criminal conduct, and this Office submits that a substantial prison term is required to vindicate the purposes and principles of sentencing as set forth in Section 3553(a). And while the Office agrees that Cohen should receive credit for his assistance in the SCO investigation, that credit should not approximate the credit a traditional cooperating witness would receive, given, among other reasons, Cohen’s affirmative decision not to become one. For these reasons, the Office respectfully requests that this Court impose a substantial term of imprisonment, one that reflects a modest downward variance from the applicable Guidelines range.
Prior related posts:
- Michael Cohen, Prez Trump's fixer, cuts a plea deal to fix his federal sentence between 46 to 63 months in federal prison
- Prez Trump advocating for a whole new kind of sentencing reform: he says cooperation deals "almost ought to be outlawed. It’s not fair."
- Michael Cohen, former lawyer to Prez trump, pleads guilty to lying to Congress
- Michael Cohen makes pitch for "time-served and restitution to the IRS" based largely on his continuing cooperation
UPDATE: My posting above initially failed to note that there big sentencing memo linked above came from the Southern District of New York. I have clarified this above because there was another filing from the Special Counsel's Office to address Cohen's offense of lying to Congress. This SCO sentencing filing runs only seven pages, and it paints Cohen in a somewhat better light, concluding this way:
The defendant’s crime was serious, both in terms of the underlying conduct and its effect on multiple government investigations. The sentence imposed should reflect the fact that lying to federal investigators has real consequences, especially where the defendant lied to investigators about critical facts, in an investigation of national importance.
However, the defendant has made substantial and significant efforts to remediate his misconduct, accept responsibility for his actions, and assist the SCO’s investigation. Accordingly, the Government respectfully submits that the Court should give due consideration to the defendant’s efforts set forth above and that it would be appropriate to allow the defendant to serve any sentence imposed in this case concurrently with any sentence imposed in United States v. Cohen, 18-cr-602 (WHP).
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