‘Trump is a racist, a conman and a cheat’
One-time aide denounces the president on hush money, Wikileaks and ‘lies’ to the US
MICHAEL COHEN produced a $35,000 cheque that he claimed showed Donald Trump personally reimbursed him for paying off the porn star Stormy Daniels, as he tore into the US president before Congress yesterday.
Mr Trump’s former “fixer” raised the possibility that the president had taken part in a criminal enterprise while in office by paying him the money, in an explosive testimony to the House of Representatives oversight committee.
The lawyer delivered a character assassination of his former boss, calling him a “racist”, a “conman” and a “cheat”, who had campaigned for president on a “platform of hate” and only wanted to boost the profile of his brand.
He also claimed Mr Trump knew in advance that Wikileaks was going to release emails hacked from the Democratic Party during the 2016 election.
Cohen has already pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations over payments to Ms Daniels. He agreed to appear before the Democrat-controlled committee yesterday as he testified in public for the first time. The committee is investigating issues including the president’s compliance with campaign finance laws and his business practices.
Cohen claimed that Mr Trump wrote a cheque to him dated Aug 1 2017 to reimburse him for payments made to Ms Daniels to cover up her alleged affair with the president.
He said: “The president of the United States thus wrote a personal cheque for the payment of hush money as part of a criminal scheme to violate campaign finance laws.” Cohen said he received a total of 11 cheques from Mr Trump over a year after making a $130,000 payment to Ms Daniels. Cohen also claimed Mr Trump told him to lie to Melania Trump about the alleged affair, which was “one of my biggest regrets”. “She is a kind, good person. I respect her greatly and she did not deserve that.”
Cohen, who once said he would “take a bullet” for the president, went on to attack Mr Trump’s character and motivation behind running for the White House. “I know what Mr Trump is. He is a racist. He is a conman. He is a cheat,” he said. He called the president a “liar” who was “fundamentally disloyal”, did not care about Americans and campaigned on a “platform of hate and intolerance”.
Cohen added: “Donald Trump is a man who ran for office to make his brand great, not to make our country great. He had no desire or intention to lead this nation, only to market himself.
“Mr Trump would often say this campaign was going to be the ‘greatest infomercial in political history’. He never expected to win.”
Cohen also claimed the president implicitly instructed him to lie to Congress over a plan to build a Trump Tower in Moscow, and suggested that Mr Trump had advance knowledge of a meeting between his son, Donald Jr, and a Russian lawyer during the campaign.
He said Mr Trump might not hand over power if defeated in 2020. He accused Mr Trump of being “un-american” and said he hoped his testimony would “help in order to heal America”
The president, tweeting from Vietnam, where he is meeting Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, said Cohen was “lying ... to reduce his prison time”.
FOR a decade he was Donald Trump’s “fixer”, the man who said he would “take a bullet” for his boss.
But when Michael Cohen raised his right hand before a Congressional committee he threatened to do his best to torpedo the Trump presidency.
He laid out a litany of accusations, including that Mr Trump had only run for office for publicity, that he knew in advance about Wikileaks releasing Russian-hacked emails, that he committed criminal acts in the White House and that he was a “racist” who called black people “stupid”.
Cohen hoped it would be a “John Dean moment” – recalling how Richard Nixon’s White House counsel turned on him. After watching the testimony, Mr Dean, now 81, said: “His mea culpa was excellent. I find him a good witness. This is a witness who can cause the president trouble.”
Wikileaks
Among Cohen’s most damaging allegations was that Mr Trump knew about the release by Wikileaks, on July 22 2016, of emails hacked by Russia from the Democratic Party.
He said Roger Stone, the political consultant and Trump associate, was working as an unpaid freelance for Mr Trump and would regularly call him.
Cohen said he listened in as Mr Stone said there would be a “massive dump” of emails within “a few days”. Mr Trump responded: “Wouldn’t that be great,” but Cohen did not say he had evidence that Mr Trump was actively
colluding with Wikileaks and the Russians. “I would not use the word collude,” he said. But he believed Mr Trump was “capable” of colluding with a foreign power and would do “whatever is necessary” to win.
Stormy Daniels
Cohen detailed a sense of panic in the days before the election as Stormy Daniels threatened to go public with her accusations of an affair with Mr Trump. He said Mr Trump told him: “It’s $130,000, it’s not a lot of money and we should just do it. So go ahead and do it.” Cohen said he ended up making the payment. He was repaid by Mr Trump with 11 personal cheques over a year, he said.
Describing a visit to see Mr Trump in the Oval Office he said: “It’s truly aweinspiring, he’s showing me around and pointing to different paintings.
He says something to the effect of ‘Don’t worry, Michael, your January and February checks are coming’.”
In addition to a cheque for $35,000 paid to him on Aug 1 2017, he also produced in Congress another similar one signed by Mr Trump, Donald Trump Jr and Allen Weisselberg.
Trump Tower Moscow
Cohen suggested Mr Trump knew in advance about the Trump Tower meeting with Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, set up by his son, Donald Jr, during the campaign. Cohen described an incident in which Donald Jr told his father in a low voice: “The meeting is all set.” He said Trump replied: “OK good ... let me know.” Trump has denied having advance knowledge of the meeting, which has come under intense scrutiny in the Robert Mueller probe. Cohen said: “Mr Trump frequently told me and others that his son Don Jr had the worst judgment of anyone in the world and also that Don Jr would never set up any meeting of any significance without checking with his father.” Cohen has been convicted of lying to Congress about a project to build a Moscow Trump Tower. He first told Congress the plan ended early in Mr Trump’s presidential candidacy, when in fact it went on after he was the Republican nominee. Cohen said: “Mr Trump did not directly tell me to lie to Congress. That’s not how he operates. In conversations we had during the campaign, at the same time I was actively negotiating in Russia for him, he would
look me in the eye and tell me, ‘There’s no business in Russia’ and then go out and lie to the American people. In his way, he was telling me to lie.”
Racism
Cohen said: “Mr Trump is a racist. In private he is even worse. He once asked me if I could name a country run by a black person that wasn’t a ‘s---hole’. This was when Barack Obama was president. While we were once driving through a struggling neighbourhood in Chicago, he commented that only black people could live that way. And he told me that black people would never vote for him because they were too stupid.”
Portrait
Cohen said Mr Trump was a “cheat”, detailing how he directed him to find a straw bidder to buy a portrait of himself that was being auctioned.
It was bought by the fake bidder for $60,000, he said. Mr Trump then directed the Trump Foundation, a charity, to repay the fake bidder. Mr Trump kept the portrait, said Cohen.
Vietnam
Cohen said Mr Trump asked him to deal with bad publicity about his deferments from the Vietnam War draft. “Mr Trump claimed it was because of a bone spur but when I asked for medical records he gave me none and said there was no surgery.”
Cohen says Mr Trump told him: “You think I’m stupid? I wasn’t going to Vietnam.” Cohen added: “I find it ironic, President Trump, that you are in Vietnam right now.”