Cohen Set to Tell Congress Trump is a 'Conman,' 'Racist,' Knew About WikiLeaks Email Release Ahead of Time
President Trump’s former longtime attorney Michael Cohen is set to publicly testify before a House committee today, where, according to media reports on his prepared testimony, he will call the president a "conman," "racist" and "cheat," and claim that Trump knew ahead of time that WikiLeaks was going to release emails that would be damaging to Hillary Clinton's campaign. Cohen also says in the prepared testimony that Trump implicitly told him to lie about efforts that were ongoing during the 2016 presidential campaign to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. He says Trump, quote, "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," adding that, quote, "in his way, he was telling me to lie."
WikiLeaks/Emails:Cohen says that he was in Trump's office in July 2016 when Trump's longtime friend and adviser Roger Stone called and said on speakerphone that, quote, "within a couple of days, there would be a massive dump of emails that would damage Hillary Clinton’s campaign."Racist Statements:Cohen says that Trump made racist comments about black people, including that they'd never vote for him because they were too stupid, remarking once while driving through a poor Chicago neighborhood that only black people could live that way, and once asking him -- at a time when Barack Obama was president -- to name a country run by a black person that wasn't falling apart.
Cohen cooperated with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, and will begin a three-year prison sentence this spring after pleading guilty to lying to Congress, including about the Moscow project, in 2017 and committing campaign finance violations by making payments before the election to porn star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who claimed they had affairs with Trump. He plans to show the House committee a copy of the check Trump wrote to him after he was president to reimburse him for those payments. White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders blasted Cohen yesterday, saying that it was, quote, "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."
Congressman Accused of Cohen Threats: Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida tweeted what some perceived as a threat against Cohen yesterday, writing, "Do your wife & father-in-law know about your girlfriends? Maybe tonight would be a good time for that chat. I wonder if she'll remain faithful when you're in prison. She's about to learn a lot..." After first dismissing the accusations of witness-tampering, saying he was instead "witness-testing" Cohen's truthfulness and character, Gaetz later apologized and deleted the tweet, saying he should have chosen better words.
(Pulse Networks)