Michael Cohen gets stiff sentence for campaign finance violations in plea deal

Michael Cohen, the former attorney and close friend to President Donald Trump, was sentenced for the crimes he admitted in his plea deal with federal prosecutors.

Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison for violating campaign finance laws when he made a payment to Stormy Daniels in order to secure her silence about an extramarital affair with Trump ahead of the 2016 election.

Cohen claims that he made the payment at the behest of Trump, who was a presidential candidate at the time.

He will also be subject to three years of supervised release after serving the prison time. Cohen said in court that he was in "mental and physical incarceration, because of the "blind loyalty" he gave to the president.

Trump said to Reuters on Tuesday that there was no violation committed, and seemed to put the blame on Cohen.

Number one, it wasn't a campaign contribution. If it were, it's only civil. And even if it's only civil, there was no violation based on what we did... And to add a fourth little tranche to it: Michael Cohen is a lawyer. He's supposed to know what to do. That's what you rely on people for. That's what you pay lawyers for.

Rudy Giuliani, the current attorney for President Trump, released a statement to Fox News about the development.

"The sentencing hearing illuminates why the president thinks this is a witch hunt," Giuliani said. "The payments to settle are not illegal because they were paid out of the president's own pocket, and not with campaign money, they were private transactions."

Cohen's lawyer, Lanny Davis, issued a warning to the president about what statements he could expect from his client in the future.

"At the appropriate time, after Mr. [Robert] Mueller completes his investigation and issues his final report," Davis said in a statement to CBS News. "I look forward to assisting Michael to state publicly all he knows about Mr. Trump – and that includes any appropriate congressional committee interested in the search for truth and the difference between facts and lies."

"Mr. Trump's repeated lies cannot contradict stubborn facts," he concluded.

Here's the video of Giuliani's comments: