Thread by @IvanPentchoukov

Contrary to the media spin, an analysis of Michael Cohen's plea deal and sentencing shows his campaign finance charges account for:

- 5 of the 24 offense levels
- 7 of the 36 months in prison
- $10,000 of the $2,000,000 in fines/forfeiture/restitution

In the plea deal, Cohen’s sentencing was calculated using the Nov. 1, 2016, U.S. Sentencing Guidelines (USSG).

Plea deal PDF: documentcloud.org/documents/4779…

USSG PDF: ussc.gov/sites/default/…

Under the 2016 USSG, Cohen’s crimes were grouped pursuant to USSG 3D1.2(d).

The sentencing guideline was determined based on USSG 3D1.3(b), which instructs to use the guideline with the highest level of offense to determine the sentence.

The highest level of offense was calculated under USSG 2B1.1, which is related to Count Six of Cohen’s conviction, namely “false statements to a financial institution related to a credit decision.”

The 2B1.1 grouping does not include campaign finance violations. It consists of crimes like fraud, deceit, embezzlement.

Under that grouping, Cohen’s level of offense was calculated as 7.

An additional 16 levels were added based on the sum of money involved. The bulk of that is related to the tax evasion and false statement charges.

Depending on the calculation, which is not disclosed in the plea deal, the campaign finance convictions probably accounted for no more than 1 of the 16 levels, because they involved one $130,000 payment. (Cohen never made the second payment.)

The other four levels added to the calculation are exclusively related to campaign finance violations. The prosecutors and defense agree on this, as per the sentencing memos.

The campaign finance violations also don’t appear in the main listing of offenses in the judgement form signed by the judge.

Form PDF: documentcloud.org/documents/5625…

The campaign finance charges are instead listed as “additional counts of conviction” on page 2, although this may be due to the space limitation on page 1.

Cohen’s restitution payment is also unrelated to the campaign finance violations. He is to pay the IRS $1.4M of the taxes he evaded.

The $500,00 forfeiture is also unrelated to campaign finance. According to the judge’s forfeiture order, Cohen is to pay that to the U.S. Marshals Service in connection to Count Six - false statements to a bank.

Order PDF: documentcloud.org/documents/5625…

One of the two $50,000 fines is completely unrelated to campaign finance violations. Per the judgement form, the judge imposed it for the “False Statements to U.S. Congress” count.

Form PDF: documentcloud.org/documents/5625…

The second $50,000 is only partly related to campaign finance violations. Using the rough calculation above, about $10,000 of that is related to campaign finance.

You couldn't tell all that from the media headlines and angles, which focused exclusively on Cohen's campaign finance violations.

The media also won't tell you that the payments are almost definitively not violations.

Don't take it from me, the former Federal Elections Commission chair who helped draft the laws said so back in August.

theepochtimes.com/former-fec-cha…

I just spoke to a federal sentencing expert who reviewed the above analysis and said it's on point.

A second sentencing expert agrees: campaign finance charges had "very little" to do with the sentence.

"My opinion is the campaign violations accounted for very little of his sentence because he had some pretty significant tax evasion and fraud counts in there."

Also confirmed with sentencing expert: campaign finance violations do not impact the 16 levels calculated based on the money involved.

So the campaign finance charges account for 4 of 24 offense levels, not the 5 of 24 in my initial analysis.