Trump accuses ex-lawyer Michael Cohen of making up stories to get a deal

“If anyone is looking for a good lawyer, I would strongly suggest that you don’t retain the services of Michael Cohen!” Trump wrote in a tweet Wednesday morning.

Cohen on Tuesday pleaded guilty to eight charges in federal court, including tax evasion and a campaign finance violation related to payments made to a pair of women who have claimed they had affairs with Trump years before he was elected to office.

Neither the president nor the women were named in court, though The Associated Press reported that the amounts of money paid and the dates of the transactions lined up with payments made to adult film star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy Playmate McDougal.

Trump has denied that he had affairs with either Daniels or McDougal. On Wednesday, he accused Cohen of “(making) up stories in order to get a ‘deal’” and praised his former campaign manager Paul Manafort for refusing to “’break’” in a separate case stemming from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian election meddling.

A Virginia jury found Manafort guilty Tuesday on eight of 18 charges, including tax fraud, bank fraud and hiding foreign bank accounts. Although the charges stemmed from the Mueller probe, they did not touch on questions of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election or its possible ties to Trump campaign officials.

Daniels said she had a sexual encounter with Trump in 2006. She signed a non-disclosure agreement shortly before voters went to the polls for the 2016 presidential election in exchange for $130,000 from Cohen. She has since sued to break the agreement.

McDougal claimed she had a nearly yearlong affair with the president in 2006 and 2007. The rights to McDougal's story were bought in August 2016 by American Media Inc., the company that publishes the National Enquirer, The Wall Street Journal reported, but her story was never published.