Unless Lanny is incredibly naive, there's no way he'd believe that this would pile up the ladder onto Trump, because in order to do that they'd have to prove–as in cite the specific FEC statute– where-in this payment was made as an in-kind campaign contribution, and not just a routine "Lawyer pays off gold-digger for rich client." There's not a snowball's chance in Hell that they'd be able to do that, this is just the SDNY flexing its Resistance Muscles™ because they had Cohen dead to rights on all of the tax evasion charges, so they knew he'd agree to any plea deal they slapped on the table.
Even if you wandered way, way out into the field of possibilities and they manage to pull of some exceptionally clever legalese to paint this out as a campaign contribution, all that would happen is Trump would pay the fine and move on. Yeah, a fine. Even Obama had to shell out $375,000 for an FEC violation, and that was several magnitudes "worse" than what's being discussed here. Nobody was criminally charged, and nobody went to jail.
Anyone who's expecting this to move further up the ladder and make its way into impeachment proceedings is completely off of their rockers and needs to put that cork back in their champagne bottle. This would be a civil violation, not a criminal violation. I've seen more than a few people now run around and suggest that Trump could be held on a "Criminal conspiracy to violate campaign finance laws"–whatever the fuck that's supposed to mean–but go look at US Code Title 52 - Voting and Elections for yourself, and see if you can find that anywhere in there. In the best-case scenario for the Regressives, they yank a few thousand dollars out of a billionaire's hands, and run some holier-than-thou victory lap on Twitter.