It’s not criminal for a publication to bury or promote stories, but the fact that they are admitting to just making shit up with malicious intent opens up all sorts of lawsuits.
I bet that there’s a bunch of civil lawyers all chubbed up right now thinking about all of the libel and fraud cases that they can bring.
The other thing to remember is that the case is not about influencing elections. It’s about cooking the books to hide the payouts. They are only using this guy to show that Cohen was the bag man for funneling payments in this scheme. This refutes Trumps claim that all payments were for legal services.