Mueller investigation - live: Michael Cohen gave information about Russian attempts to reach Trump campaign dating back to 2015

Prosecutors in the federal court are seeking between 51 and 63 months for Cohen, which they say "reflects Cohen’s extensive, deliberate, and serious criminal conduct".

The filing argues that that a "substantial prison term is required to vindicate the purposes and principles of sentencing" laid forth in the law.

The sentencing guideline from special counsel Robert Mueller's team has just dropped, joining an earlier memo from the SDNY.

Mueller's team says in the memo that Cohen lied to Congress about a potential development deal in Moscow that could have made the Trump Organisation hundreds of millions of dollars in money from Russian sources.

The SDNY document says that Cohen's crimes — tax evasion, campaign finance violations, lying to a financial institution, and lying to Congress — are different but follow a similar patter: Cohen is deceitful, the filing claims.

The crimes "each involve deception, and were each motivated by personal greed and ambition. While Cohen – as his own submission makes clear – already enjoyed a privileged life, his desire for even greater wealth and influence precipitated an extensive course of criminal conduct", prosecutors wrote.

Here is an interesting bit from the SDNY filing, which references the well known story of how Cohen came to be so close to President Donald Trump.

"The board of directors of a condominium building in which Cohen lived was attempting to remove from the building the name of the owner (“Individual-1”) of a Manhattan-based real estate company (the “Company”)," the document reads.

This is worth noting because it basically names Mr Trump as "Individual-1", which is how documents appear to be referring to the president.

The court filings from the SDNY claims that payments made by Cohen to two adult film actresses who have alleged affairs with President Donald Trump constituted campaign finance violations — and that the president himself ordered the payments.

"In particular, and as Cohen himself has now admitted, with respect to both payments, he acted in coordination with and at the direction of [the president]", the document reads.

The SDNY filing also details how Cohen negotiated a payment to ex-Playboy playmate Karen McDougal, who sold her story of an alleged affair with Mr Trump to American Media Inc — the publisher of the National Enquirer — after Cohen promised that the company would be reimbursed by the Trump Organisation in order to keep the story secret.

Here's a link to the Mueller filing, which says, among other things that any sentence should be served concurrent to the federal case — but does not take any further position on Cohen's sentencing.

The Mueller filing calls Cohen's crimes "serious" and further accuses him of lying to Congress and investigators in order to give the false impression that a project between the Trump Organization and Moscow had ended before the Republican primaries, and to minimize the ties between that Moscow deal and Mr Trump.

We're seeing some portions from the Mueller memo that seems to indicate that Cohen and perhaps others in the Trump orbit were in close contact with Russians who blatantly offered to coordinate efforts in the 2016 election.

The document says that Cohen "received the contact information for, and spoke with, a Russian national who claimed to be a 'trusted person' in the Russian Federation who could offer the campaign 'political synergy' and “synergy on a government level".

That person, according to the filling promised “political synergy” and “synergy on a government level.” 

The document continues to say that Cohen was aggressively lobbied by Russian sources to set up a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Mr Trump, but that he did not follow through on that offer. The Russian source indicated that there is "no bigger warranty" for a project to proceed than the approval of Mr Putin.

The Mueller filing also indicates that Cohen provided the special counsel's office with "useful information concerning certain discrete Russia-related matters core to its investigation that he obtained by virtue of his regular contact with Company executives during the campaign".

Cohen, the memo said, "provided relevant and useful information concerning his contacts with persons connected to the White House during the 2017–2018 time period".

But: "The defendant’s crime was serious, both in terms of the underlying conduct and its effect on multiple government investigations. The sentence imposed should reflect the fact that lying to federal investigators has real consequences, especially where the defendant lied to investigators about critical facts, in an investigation of national importance".