Special counsel Robert Mueller has reached a tentative deal with Michael Cohen, the former personal attorney and long-time fixer for President Donald Trump, sources told ABC News.
Cohen is scheduled to appear in federal court in Manhattan on Thursday where he is expected to enter a guilty plea for misstatements to Congress in closed-door testimony last year about his contacts with Russians during the presidential campaign.
Once among the presidents most loyal and zealous defenders in business and politics, Cohen has now promised to put family and country first by cooperating with prosecutors, becoming perhaps the most pivotal public witness against his former boss.
Cohens earlier plea deal with federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York implicated President Trump in campaign finance felonies. Since then, Cohen has spent more than 70 hours in interviews with Mueller's team. The questioning has focused on contacts with Russians by Trump associates during the campaign, Trumps business ties to Russia, obstruction of justice and talk of possible pardons, sources familiar with the discussions have told ABC News.
The potential significance of Cohens cooperation is immense, said Kendall Coffey, a former United States Attorney in Florida.
As Trumps personal attorney and problem solver for more than a decade, Cohens portfolio at the Trump Organization covered personal and business matters both routine and highly sensitive. His dealings while serving as a senior executive in Trumps global empire include several projects thought to be of interest to Muellers prosecutors, most notably the pursuit of a Trump Tower project in Moscow during the presidential campaign.
"It cannot be determined if Cohens cooperation will lead to other criminal allegations," Coffey said. "But for most high-powered business people with complex business interests, having ones personal attorney become a star witness for the prosecution is the worst possible legal nightmare."
Cohen once said that he would take a bullet for the president but has now come to regard Trump as dangerously unfit for the presidency, according to people close to Cohen.
He has been determined to tell Muellers team, other federal prosecutors and the New York State Attorney Generals Office all that he knows -- and his testimony poses a potentially serious threat to the president, sources told ABC News. They also say Cohens voluntary cooperation has been crucial to the special counsels case.
The news of the agreement comes during a tumultuous week in the Mueller investigation. On Monday, the special counsels plea deal with Trumps former campaign manager Paul Manafort officially collapsed, with prosecutors alleging that Manafort breached the pact by lying to federal agents and government lawyers during interviews. Manaforts attorneys dispute the allegations that he lied.
The president this week has been ratcheting up his criticisms of the investigation and Muellers team, accusing the prosecutors in a Wednesday tweet of viciously telling witnesses to lie about facts and likening the inquiry to the dark period in American history when Republican U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy sought to expose alleged communist sympathizers in the 1950s.
Sources familiar with the special counsels proposed agreement with Cohen told ABC News that the 52-year-old New Yorker will admit to making multiple misstatements to two congressional intelligence committees investigating alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia to influence the 2016 presidential election. It was not immediately clear what Cohen told the congressional committees in the fall of 2017 that he will now say was false.
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