Michael Cohen 'very unsatisfied' with sentencing in Trump hush money trial

Michael Cohen, President-elect Trump's former personal attorney, said he is "very unsatisfied” with the sentencing in Trump’s criminal case involving a cover-up of hush money payments ahead of the 2016 election.

“Well, I feel very unsatisfied, as do many Americans. I believe one of two things— either there's accountability or they should have dismissed the case as the motion requested,” Cohen said on MSNBC’s “The Weekend” on Saturday.

“I believe that if there's no accountability, there's no deterrence. And if there's no deterrence, no accountability, what's the point to have the case anyway? So that we could all just turn around and refer to him now as the felon president?”

“I mean, nobody in this country—Republican, Democrat or Independent—should be turning around and taking solace in the fact that our incoming president, the leader of the free world, is a convicted felon. Nobody should enjoy that moniker for him, least of all him,” Cohen added.

Trump was spared any punishment for his hush money criminal conviction Friday when Judge Juan Merchan sentenced him to an unconditional discharge.

Merchan’s decision to release Trump with no strings attached capped the first and only criminal trial of a former president, less than two weeks before Trump is set to return to the White House.

New York jurors in May found Trump guilty of 34 felonies over a scheme intended to unlawfully sway the 2016 election by concealing a payment to a porn actor to keep quiet about their alleged affair, which Trump has denied.

Cohen, Trump’s one-time “fixer,” turned on his former boss and served a three-year sentence after pleading guilty to federal campaign finance charges and other crimes. He maintains that he committed some of the crimes at Trump’s direction and testified to that effect as the star witness in the New York hush money case last year.

Cohen over the weekend said he was frustrated by the apparent discrepancy in the severity of the punishments that he and Trump each received for related crimes. He took issue with the “unconditional discharge.”

“How about make it a conditional discharge?” Cohen said. “And the condition would be within the next 72 hours, you have to go work in a soup kitchen. Or come to New York where he has that roadway on the West Side Highway. Put on a red jumpsuit and pick up some garbage, just so that there's some accountability, some responsibility.”

“I did six years, three years of incarceration and three years of supervised release, without a single second — not a second, not a minute, not an hour, not a day — off of my sentence,” Cohen said. “And he doesn't even get a slap on the wrist. So I feel unsatisfied.”

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