The fixer

An emotional Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, was sentenced Wednesday to three years in prison after pleading guilty to nine federal charges stemming from his failure to report millions of dollars in income and making secret payments to women who claimed they had affairs with Trump.

One of the charges, lying to Congress about his dealings concerning a proposed Trump Tower in Moscow, stemmed from special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into the Trump campaign’s potential collusion with Russia in the 2016 election.

Standing before Judge William Pauley, Cohen, 52, who came to the Manhattan courtroom with his wife and two children, said blind loyalty to Trump led him to “choose darkness over light.” He said that he will work to prove history wrong and that he is not the villain in this investigation.

He appeared to tear up as he apologized to his family and to the people of the United States.

“I am truly sorry and I promise I will be better,” he said.

After a while, it got to be all normal. None of it seemed like crimes. It was more like Michael was enterprising and that he and the guys were making a few bucks hustling, while the other guys were sitting on their asses waiting for hand-outs. Our husbands weren’t brain surgeons. They were Cooley grads. The only way they could make extra money, real extra money, was to go out and cut a few corners.