Cohen savages Trump

President’s former ‘fixer’ dumps a bucket on ‘racist, conman’

DONALD Trump’s longtime lawyer Michael Cohen turned on his former boss in a dramatic congressional appearance on Wednesday, calling the US President a conman and inveterate liar who engaged in possibly illegal conduct while in office.

Mr Cohen told the House Oversight Committee that Mr Trump directed him last year to lie about hush payments made to a porn actress to silence her claims of an affair with Mr Trump.

He said Mr Trump knew in advance in mid-2016 that WikiLeaks would publish emails stolen from rival Hillary Clinton’s campaign by the Russians.

And Mr Cohen asserted that personal lawyers for Mr Trump and his family reviewed and edited his written testimony to Congress in 2017 in which he lied about a Moscow real estate deal that was negotiated through the 2016 presidential election.

But Mr Cohen’s five hours of testimony, at times angry and at others emotional, produced no fresh evidence that Mr Trump or his campaign colluded with Russia during the race, or evidence of financial crimes by the President and his Trump Organisation – subjects at the centre of multiple investigations.

Instead, he drew a damning portrait of the man he worked for as personal lawyer, dealmaker and fixer for over 10 years – depicting a morally corrupt figure who forces staff to lie for him, and cares only about himself.

“Today, I am here to tell the truth about Mr Trump,” Mr Cohen told the nationally televised hearing.

“He is a racist. He is a conman. He is a cheat,” who inflated his assets when it suited him “and deflated his assets to reduce his real estate taxes.”

Mr Cohen was sentenced in December to three years in prison over the hush payments and his lies to Congress – both of which he said were to protect Mr Trump – as well as for tax evasion.

The White House sought to undermine Mr Cohen’s credibility, insisting his history of lying to Congress made his testimony unreliable.