Ex Trump lawyer Cohen says he paid man to rig online polls

Cohen confirmed a Wall Street Journal report that in early 2015 he paid the head of a small technology firm, John Gauger, to write computer script that would place multiple votes for Trump in an online poll of news broadcaster CNBC.

They repeated the effort in an online poll of website Drudge Report, which is popular with conservatives.

Cohen, who also paid Gauger to create a social media account to promote himself, confirmed the main elements of the Journal story.

“What I did was at the direction of and for the sole benefit of @realDonaldTrump @POTUS. I truly regret my blind loyalty to a man who doesn’t deserve it,” he wrote on Twitter.

Cohen, who was the real estate billionaire’s right-hand-man and fixer at the Trump Organization in New York at the time, pleaded guilty last year to charges that he violated campaign finance laws by arranging hush payments ahead of the 2016 election to women who claimed credibly to have had extramarital affairs with Trump.

Cohen implicated Trump in that crime, saying he directed the payments.

The New York lawyer, 52, was sentenced to three years in jail for the campaign finance violation and other charges.