Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Source: Cohen to go public on Trump
Expected testimony: President’s alleged lying, financial violations
Expected testimony from former lawyer includes president’s alleged lying, financial violations.
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, is expected to give a behind-the-scenes account of what he will claim is Trump’s lying, racism and cheating, and possibly even criminal conduct, when he testifies publicly before a House committee Wednesday, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.
Cohen is expected to provide what he will claim is evidence, in the form of documents, of Trump’s conduct, said the person, who requested anonymity to discuss the confidential testimony.
Trump’s former personal “fixer” arrived on Capitol Hill on Tuesday to begin three days of congressional appearances, starting with a closed-door interview with the Senate intelligence committee. The public won’t have a chance to hear from him until Wednesday, when he testifies before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. He will go behind closed doors again when he talks to the House intelligence committee Thursday.
White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement Tuesday it was “laughable that anyone would take a convicted liar like Cohen at his word, and pathetic to see him given yet another opportunity to spread his lies.”
Lawmakers are alternately suspicious of Cohen — who is set to serve prison time for lying to the House and Senate intelligence committees in 2017 — and eager to hear what he has to say after he turned on his longtime boss. Senators on the intelligence panel planned to attend Tuesday’s meeting, a departure from the committee’s usual practice, where interviews are conducted by staff only.
Senate intelligence committee chairman Richard Burr said that senators will have staff ask questions but will be in the room to observe.
He said no topics will be off limits and Cohen, a confidant of Trump for many years, “should expect to get any question from anywhere about anything.”
Burr said committee members know a lot more than they did when they first interviewed Cohen, who later pleaded guilty to lying to the committees about abandoning a proposal for a Trump Tower in Moscow in January 2016. Cohen has since acknowledged he continued pursuing the project for months after that.
Burr suggested his committee will take steps to ensure Cohen is telling the truth.
“I’m sure there will be some questions we know the answers to, so we’ll test him to see whether in fact he’ll be truthful this time,” Burr said.
Cohen’s testimony is among the most anticipated since the House and Senate started investigating the Trump campaign’s Russia ties two years ago. In addition to lying to Congress, Cohen pleaded guilty last year to campaign finance violations for his involvement in payments to two women who allege they had affairs with Trump.
Federal prosecutors in New York have said Trump directed Cohen to arrange the payments to buy the silence of porn actress Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal in the run-up to the 2016 campaign.
Trump denies the allegations and says that Cohen lied to get a lighter sentence.
Cohen, who is set to begin a three-year prison sentence in May, was officially disbarred on Tuesday.
He is also expected to discuss what he knows about a meeting between Trump campaign associates and a Russian lawyer in Trump Tower before the 2016 election, a matter that is of particular interest to special counsel Robert Mueller and congressional investigators.
Cohen is expected to discuss only matters related to Russia in the closed-door interviews with the intelligence committees, as House Oversight Chairman Elijah Cummings has said he doesn’t want to interfere with Mueller’s investigation.
Members of the Oversight panel are expected to ask questions about the campaign finance violations, Trump’s business practices and compliance with tax laws and “the accuracy of the president’s public statements,” according to a memo laying out the scope of that hearing.
Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., tweeted Tuesday that the world is “about to learn a lot” about Cohen and suggested he knew of disparaging information that could come out during the hearing.
Gaetz, a Trump ally who talks to the president frequently, is not a member of the committee that will question Cohen.
He did not offer any evidence. Still, the tweet was extraordinary because his remarks appear to be threatening or intimidating a witness.
“We’re witness testing, not witness tampering,” Gaetz told reporters.