Cohen delays testimony
His lawyer cites president’s attacks on ex-fixer’s family.
WASHINGTON — Michael Cohen, the former personal lawyer and fixer for President Donald Trump, has indefinitely postponed his congressional testimony, his lawyer said in a statement Wednesday, citing Trump’s verbal attacks on Cohen’s family in the days since Cohen scheduled his appearance on Capitol Hill.
Cohen was to appear before the House Oversight Committee on Feb. 7 at the invitation of Rep. Elijah
E. Cummings,
D-Md., chairman of the committee, but backed out because of ongoing threats against his family, his lawyer Lanny Davis said in a statement.
“By advice of counsel, Mr. Cohen’s appearance will be postponed to a later date,” Davis said in the statement. “Mr. Cohen wishes to thank Chairman Cummings for allowing him to appear before the House Oversight Committee and looks forward to testifying at the appropriate time.” He added, “This is a time where Mr. Cohen had to put his family and their safety first.”
Trump denied that he was outright threatening his former lawyer.
“He’s only been threatened by the truth, and he doesn’t want to do that, probably for me or other of his clients,” Trump said at the White House. “He has other clients also, I assume, and he doesn’t want to tell the truth for me or other of his clients.”
Cummings said Cohen had “legitimate concerns” for his family’s safety. “Efforts to intimidate witnesses, scare their family members, or prevent them from testifying before Congress are textbook mob tactics that we condemn in the strongest terms,” he said in a joint statement with Rep.
Adam Schiff, D-Calif., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. “Our nation’s laws prohibit efforts to discourage, intimidate, or otherwise pressure a witness not to provide testimony to Congress.”
But, they added, it “was never an option” for Cohen not to appear before Congress.
The committees have been in touch with Cohen and offered to work with law enforcement agencies to enhance security measures to protect his family and is in touch with Cohen’s lawyers about when he would testify, they said.
“We will not let the president’s tactics prevent Congress from fulfilling our constitutionally mandated oversight responsibilities,” the chairmen said in a statement. “This will not stop us from getting to the truth.”
Cohen pleaded guilty last year to lying to Congress, financial crimes and campaign finance violations. Federal prosecutors have said Trump directed Cohen to make the related payments during the campaign.
It is unclear how long Cohen is seeking to delay his testimony, but Cohen “looks forward to testifying at the appropriate time,” Davis said.
Cohen is scheduled to report to prison on March 6 to begin a three-year sentence.
Federal prosecutors have also said that Trump directed Cohen to make hush payments to women who claimed to have had affairs with him and were poised to speak publicly about them while Trump was running for president in 2016. The president has denied the affairs.
Cohen’s willingness to tell prosecutors and the public what he knows about any possible involvement by Trump in the crimes he has already admitted to has emerged as a threat to the Trump presidency. Cohen has spent more than 70 hours with investigators for the Southern District of New York who prosecuted the campaign finance violations, and for the special counsel investigating Russia’s election interference and possible ties to the Trump campaign.
Trump has repeatedly suggested on Twitter that Cohen’s family members be investigated. In a recent interview with Jeanine Pirro, the Fox News host and one of Trump’s preferred interviewers, he called for Cohen’s father-in-law to be investigated, without citing any details.
When Pirro pressed for the name of the father-in-law, Trump demurred but said, “You’ll look into it because nobody knows what’s going on over there.”
That interview prompted a rare statement from House Democrats cautioning that any effort to discourage or influence witness testimony before Congress could be construed as a crime.
“The integrity of our process to serve as an independent check on the executive branch must be respected by everyone, including the president,” the Democrats said in the statement.
Information for this article was contributed by Maggie Haberman of The New York Times; and by Michael Balsamo, Chad Day, Laurie Kellman, Darlene Superville and Michael R. Sisak of The Associated Press.