The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
COHEN, GOP CLASH OVER HIS TRUMP ALLEGATIONS
He sees ex-boss as a ‘con man’; Republicans hit his credibility.
WASHINGTON — Donald Trump’s former lawyer on Wednesday cast the president as a “con man” and a “cheat,” while Republicans on a congressional committee assailed him as a convicted liar out to gain publicity and hurt the president.
Michael Cohen told lawmakers that Trump had advance knowledge and embraced the news that emails damaging to Hillary Clinton would be released during the campaign. But he also said he had no “direct evidence” that Trump or his aides colluded with Russia to get him elected, the primary question of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.
Republicans on the House panel used every opportunity to denounce the hearing as a forum for a criminal who has pleaded guilty to nine felonies — including lying to Congress previously behind closed doors — and is due to report to prison on May 6.
‘Never in a million years did I imagine, when I accepted a job in 2007 to work for Donald Trump, that he would one day run for President, launch a campaign on a platform of hate and intolerance, and actually win. I regret the day I said “yes” to Mr. Trump. I regret all the help and support I gave him along the way.’
— Michael Cohen, former attorney and fixer for President Donald Trump is sworn in before testifying Wednesday before the House Oversight Committee.
‘This might be the first time someone convicted of lying to Congress has appeared again so quickly in front of the Congress. Surely, it’s the first time a convicted perjurer was brought back to be a star witness in a hearing.’
— Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio (center). Republicans displayed the sign at the hearing.
“You have a history of lying over and over and over again,” Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the oversight panel’s top Republican, told Cohen. He suggested Cohen had grown bitter because Trump didn’t give him a White House job after the election, an assertion Cohen denied. Other Republicans suggested he was angling for book and movie deals.
During his appearance, Cohen gave his version of the inner workings of Trump’s political and business operations. He likened the president to a “mobster” who demanded blind loyalty from underlings and expected them to lie on his behalf to conceal information and protect him — even if it meant breaking the law.
“I am not protecting Mr. Trump anymore,” Cohen declared.
His matter-of-fact testimony about secret payments and lies unfolded as Trump met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. At a Vietnam hotel, Trump lashed out on Twitter, saying Cohen “did bad things unrelated to Trump” and “is lying in order to reduce his prison time.”
Later, Trump’s 2020 campaign spokeswoman also questioned Cohen’s credibility in a statement.
“Michael Cohen is a felon, a disbarred lawyer, and a convicted perjurer, who lied to both Congress and the Special Counsel in a ‘deliberate and premeditated’ fashion according to the Special Counsel’s Office,” the spokeswoman, Kayleigh McEnany, said. “Now he offers what he says is evidence, but the only support for that is his own testimony, which has proved before to be worthless.
“This is the same Michael Cohen who has admitted that he lied to Congress previously,” she said. “Why did they even bother to swear him in this time?”
In testimony that cut to the heart of federal investigations, Cohen said he arranged hush money payments to women on Trump’s behalf and lied about them to the public and the first lady at the president’s behest. He agreed to say Trump was “not knowledgeable” about the transactions even though the president directly reimbursed him, and said he was left with the unmistakable impression Trump wanted him to lie to Congress about a Moscow real estate project, even if the president never directly told him so.
In one revelation, Cohen said prosecutors in New York were investigating conversations Trump or his advisers had with him after his office and hotel room was raided by the FBI last April. Cohen said he could not discuss that conversation, the last contact he said he has had with the president or anyone acting on his behalf, because it remains under investigation.
The hearing proceeded along parallel tracks, with Democrats focusing on allegations against Trump while Republicans sought to undermine Cohen’s credibility and the proceeding itself.
Cohen sought to blunt the attacks by repeatedly acknowledging his own failings.
“You make mistakes in life and I’ve owned them and I’ve taken responsibility for them, and I’m paying a huge price, as is my family,” Cohen said during testimony that spanned roughly seven hours.
Cohen will soon report to prison for a three-year sentence. At the same time, he is seen as a key witness for federal prosecutors because of his proximity to the president during key episodes under investigation and their decadelong professional relationship.
The first of six Trump aides charged in the Trump-Russia investigation to testify publicly about possible crimes committed during the 2016 campaign and in the months after, Cohen also delivered biting personal commentary on a president he called a “con man” who never expected to win.
He recalled how Trump made him threaten schools he attended to not release his grades and SAT scores, mocked his own avoidance of the Vietnam War and denigrated blacks as “too stupid” to vote for him.
“He never expected to win the primary. He never expected to win the general election,” Cohen said. “The campaign — for him — was always a marketing opportunity.”
Cohen gave lawmakers his first-person account of how he arranged to buy the silence of a porn actress and a Playboy model who said they had sex with Trump. He described a February 2017 conversation with Trump in the Oval Office in which the president reassured him that reimbursement checks were coming but would take some time to get through the White House system.
He said the president called him a year later to discuss the public messaging around the payments, and had even once put his wife, Melania, on the phone so that he could disavow knowledge.
“Lying to the first lady is one of my biggest regrets,” Cohen said. “She is a kind, good person. I respect her greatly, and she did not deserve that.”
In an allegation relating to Mueller’s probe, Cohen said he said he overheard Trump confidant Roger Stone telling the candidate in the summer of 2016 that WikiLeaks would dump damaging information about Clinton.
Trump put Stone on speakerphone and Stone told him that he had communicated with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and that “within a couple of days, there would be a massive dump of emails that would damage Hillary Clinton’s campaign,” according to Cohen. Damaging emails that U.S. officials say were hacked by Russia were later released by WikiLeaks.
Trump responded by saying “wouldn’t that be great,” Cohen said.
Stone disputed that account Wednesday.
Cohen’s claims that Trump had advance knowledge of the emails contradict the president’s assertions that he was in the dark, and it is not clear how legally problematic that could be for Trump anyway. Mueller has not suggested that mere awareness of WikiLeaks’ plans, as Stone is purported to have had, is by itself a crime.
Cohen also suggested Trump implicitly told him to lie about a Moscow real estate project. Cohen has admitted lying about the project, which he says Trump knew about as Cohen was negotiating with Russia during the campaign. Cohen said Trump did not directly tell him to lie, but “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 by saying the same thing.”
Cohen said he does not have direct evidence that Trump colluded with the Russian government during the election, but that he has “suspicions,” including after a June 2016 meeting between the president’s oldest son and a Kremlin-connected lawyer.
“I wouldn’t use the word ‘colluding.’ Was there something odd about the back-andforth praise with President Putin?” Cohen said. “Yes, but I’m not really sure I can answer the question about collusion.”