Prez rips ex-fixer as ‘weak’
President Trump called his former lawyer Michael Cohen “weak” and “not a very smart person” on Thursday and claimed the attorney was lying to get a reduced prison sentence.
The president was responding to Cohen’s admission in Manhattan federal court earlier in the day that he and Trump had been speaking about a Moscow real-estate deal until June 2016, months later than he had told Congress.
“He was convicted of various things unrelated to us,” Trump said Thursday as he left the White House for the G-20 summit in Argentina. “He was given a fairly long jail sentence, and he’s a weak person. He’s a weak person and not a very smart person. And what he’s trying to do is get a reduced sentence. So he’s lying about a project that everybody knew about.”
He then declared that even if he did want to build a Trump Tower in Moscow while campaigning for president, there would be no wrongdoing.
“There would be nothing wrong if I did do it. I was running my business while I was campaigning. There was a good chance that I wouldn’t have won, in which case I would have gotten back into the business, and why should I lose lots of opportunities?” the president said.
Cohen’s lawyer, Lanny Davis, hit back on Twitter.
“@MichaelCohen212 this morning reaffirmed what he said last July 2 and told me many times since — that he decided to put his wife, daughter, son and country first. Today he again told the truth and nothing but the truth. @realDonaldTrump called him a liar. Who do you believe?” Davis tweeted.
“I am proud that #robertmueller himself today confirmed that @MichaelCohen212 has told the truth and that truth is relevant and significant. Michael will continue to work with the SC and others until the full truth is told,” he added.
Rep. Adam Schiff, the incoming chair of the House Intelligence Committee, called Cohen’s deal a “very significant plea and statement” and predicted there were others who possibly lied to congressional investigators.
“It means that when the president was representing on the campaign that he has no business interests in Russia, that that wasn’t true,” said Schiff (D-Calif.).
“This, I think, only underscores I think the importance of not only bringing Mr. Cohen back before our committee but also looking into this issue of whether the Russians possess financial leverage over the president of the United States.”
The Kremlin said on Thursday that it had replied to Cohen’s e-mails seeking a meeting with top Russian officials about the hotel project, contradicting an earlier statement in which it claimed it never responded.
“They sent an e-mail to our office saying they wanted to develop a project of a Trump building in Moscow, asking for a meeting with [the] chief of the administration,” a spokesman for President Vladimir Putin said in a statement.
“Later, we called and asked why they wanted to have meetings with the presidential administration and explained that we have nothing to do with the construction issues in the city of Moscow.”