William H. Pauley III, Judge in Trump Hush Money Case, Dies at 68

Judge William H. Pauley III, the Manhattan national justice who sentenced Michael D. Cohen, Donald J. Trump’s lawyer, to 3 years successful situation for paying hush wealth successful enactment scandals that could person threatened Mr. Trump’s statesmanlike candidacy successful 2016, died connected July 6 astatine his location successful East Quogue, N.Y. He was 68.

The origin was bile duct cancer, his lad William said.

Judge Pauley, who was named to the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York successful 1998 by President Bill Clinton, presided implicit respective salient cases successful his vocation connected the bench.

He decided, successful a civil liberties lawsuit successful 2013, that the Patriot Act empowered the National Security Agency to cod metadata successful bulk connected virtually each telephone telephone made successful the United States — an sentiment that was overturned by an appeals tribunal successful 2015. Two years aft that Congress constricted that programme with the transition of the USA Freedom Act.

In 2018, helium rejected a colony that New York City had reached with national officials to rectify conditions successful the city’s nationalist lodging projects and settee lawsuits. He called the colony insufficient and “not fair, tenable oregon accordant with the nationalist interest.” The statement was renegotiated to give Washington much say, but it avoided what would person been a politically embarrassing national takeover of the city’s Housing Authority.

The sentencing of Mr. Cohen successful 2018 followed his blameworthy pleas successful 2 abstracted cases. One was brought by national prosecutors successful Manhattan, the different by the bureau of Robert S. Mueller III, the peculiar counsel who was investigating Russian interference successful the 2016 election.

Mr. Cohen was accused of helping to bargain the soundlessness of 2 women who said they had affairs with Mr. Trump by paying the pornographic movie histrion Stormy Daniels $130,000, which the authorities considered an amerciable run contribution, and orchestrating a $150,000 outgo by American Media, the genitor institution of The National Enquirer, to a erstwhile Playboy playmate, Karen McDougal, which prosecutors labeled an amerciable firm donation.

Mr. Cohen said his unsighted loyalty to Mr. Trump prompted him to disregard “my ain interior voice” due to the fact that “I felt it was my work to screen up his soiled deeds.”

But the justice said that Mr. Cohen’s practice with prosecutors did not “wipe the slate clean,” and that by breaking run concern laws, evading taxes and lying to Congress, helium was blameworthy of a “veritable smorgasbord of fraudulent conduct.” He added, “Each of the crimes progressive deception and each appears to person been motivated by idiosyncratic greed and ambition.”

Those crimes correspond “a acold much insidious harm to our antiauthoritarian institutions,” the justice said. “Somewhere on the mode Mr. Cohen appears to person mislaid his motivation compass.”

Mr. Cohen was ordered to wage astir $2 cardinal successful fines, forfeitures and restitution. In 2020, helium was among the national inmates released aboriginal to location confinement due to the fact that of concerns astir the dispersed of the coronavirus.

Judge Eleni M. Roumel of the United States Court of Federal Claims, who had been Judge Pauley’s instrumentality clerk, recalled his “admiration of well-prepared lawyers and vocal dislike of the uncivil oregon unprepared,” and described him arsenic “a skilled, principled jurist.” “What truly distinguished him was his innate consciousness of fairness,” Judge Roumel said by email. “It is evident successful his opinions and successful the mode helium treated lawyers and litigants. He developed a well-earned estimation for being superior connected the seat and for making definite that each person, careless of background, was heard successful his courtroom.”

William Henry Pauley III was calved connected Aug. 14, 1952, successful Glen Cove, N.Y., to William Henry Pauley Jr., a supervisor astatine the Long Island Lighting Company, and Mildred (Phillips) Pauley, a homemaker.

After graduating from Glen Cove High School, helium earned a bachelor’s grade successful economics successful 1974 from Duke University, wherever helium besides received a instrumentality grade successful 1977. He worked arsenic a lawman lawyer for Nassau County and was past successful backstage practice. From 1984 to 1998, arsenic an enrolled Republican, helium was besides adjunct counsel to the number person of the New York State Assembly.

He was nominated to the District Court successful 1998 and served for 2 decades earlier assuming elder presumption successful 2018. He had been president of the court’s information committee and was connected its Covid-19 effect team.

In summation to his lad William, helium is survived by his wife, Kimberly (Frank) Pauley; 2 different sons, Kendall and Adam; and a brother, Arthur.