It doesn’t take a lawyer to recognize that that Trump-Daniels agreement “contemplated” litigation, which means that Cohen’s “financial assistance” was prohibited under the New York ethics rules.

Cohen probably won’t have to worry much about the election law violation, which can only be prosecuted by the U.S. Department of Justice. The Daniels affair is unrelated to the Russia probe, which means that Attorney General Jeff Sessions is not recused and Special Counsel Robert Mueller won’t likely be looking into it. Sessions is already on thin ice with Trump, so the chances that he will indict his boss’s attorney are pretty much nil.

The New York bar authorities, however, are not under the control of the White House, and they have no reason to ignore Cohen’s evident flouting of the ethics rules.