Michael Cohen is expected to tell Congress that Trump broke the law while in office: NBC News
Terri Cullen
Mike Calia
Published 4 Hours Ago Updated 40 Mins Ago
CNBC.com
Former Trump personal lawyer Michael Cohen on Tuesday starts a three-day gauntlet of congressional appearances by giving a closed-door interview to the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Trump’s former “fixer” is expected to detail what he claims to know about Trump’s contacts with Russia, hush payments made prior to the 2016 election and other sensitive matters.
Cohen is also expected to provide evidence of alleged criminal conduct by Trump since he became president, according to NBC. In addition to his testimony, Cohen will reveal information about Trump’s financial statements.
Michael Cohen, former personal lawyer to U.S. President Donald Trump, center, arrives to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee in Washington, DC, U.S., on Tuesday, Feb. 26, 2019.
Andrew Harrer | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Michael Cohen, former personal lawyer to U.S. President Donald Trump, center, arrives to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee in Washington, DC, U.S., on Tuesday, Feb. 26, 2019.
President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen is expected to tell lawmakers this week about alleged criminal conduct Trump committed while in office, NBC News reported, citing a knowledgeable source.
Cohen starts a three-day gauntlet of congressional appearances on Tuesday by giving a closed-door interview to the Senate Intelligence Committee. He is expected to detail what he claims to know about Trump’s contacts with Russia, hush payments made before the 2016 election and other sensitive matters.
Cohen arrived on Capitol Hill on Tuesday morning just as Air Force One delivered Trump to Vietnam, where the president was set to hold high-stakes talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, adding more of a symbolic charge to an already historic moment.
Cohen is expected to provide evidence of alleged criminal conduct by Trump since he became president, NBC News said. In addition to his testimony, Cohen will reveal information about Trump’s financial statements, according to NBC, citing a source who declined to be named.
The former Trump lawyer and fixer, who is slated to report to federal prison May 6, will also testify in a closed-door hearing with the House Intelligence Committee on Thursday. The main event of the week will happen Wednesday, however, as Cohen is scheduled to testify in public before the House Oversight Committee.
The White House pre-emptively trashed Cohen’s testimony, calling him a “disgraced felon.”
“Sadly, he will go before Congress this week and we can expect more of the same,” Trump press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement. “It’s 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.”
In his testimony , Cohen is prepared to describe behind-the-scenes anecdotes about Trump that include lies, racism and cheating as a private businessman when Cohen worked for him for 10 years, NBC News said, citing the source.
Likewise, Cohen plans to tell lawmakers that Trump asked him several times about a proposed skyscraper project in Moscow long after he secured the Republican presidential nomination, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters.
Cohen’s assertion that Trump was inquiring about the project as late as June 2016, if true, would show Trump remained personally interested in a business venture in Russia well into his candidacy. Cohen, scheduled to report to prison in May after pleading guilty to charges including lying to Congress, has already said he briefed Trump on the project in June 2016.
WATCH: Trump underreported payments to Cohen in official disclosures
Cohen will also discuss his own motives for lying for the president and why he decided to tell the truth publicly for fear of his family and country, NBC said.
Senators are suspicious of Cohen, who is set to serve time in prison for lying to the committee in 2017. But they are also eager to hear what Trump’s former loyal fixer has to say.
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C., told The Associated Press that senators will have staff ask questions in Tuesday’s session but will be there to observe. He says no topics will be off limits and that Cohen “should expect to get any question from anywhere about anything.”
Cohen pleaded guilty to several charges last year – in cases brought by the Southern District of New York and special counsel Robert Mueller’s office – including financial crimes, lying to Congress and campaign-finance violations linked to hush-money payments given to two women who claimed they had sexual encounters with Trump.
Cohen implicated Trump in his campaign-finance confession. Trump has denied the affairs and all wrongdoing.
—CNBC’s Christina Wilkie , the Associated Press and Reuters contributed to the report.
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Note: There is talk around Washington DC, that very little of what comes out will be seen by the public, from Mueller’s report, so the Cohen interview promises to be of particular interest both to his adversaries as well as to his supporters.
It remains to be seen, however, what effect negative revelations on the part of Cohen will have on the latter group.
Should Trump get the Nobel Peace Prize ?
The Ignoble Peace Prize
The Don is off to North Korea the very week that Michael Cohen is publically testifying. What a way to distract the public.
It reminds me of the Wiki-leak dump of emails right after the Access Hollywood tape came out. Rather brilliant, don’t you think?
Regardless of what actually happens in North Korea with Kim Jong-un, The Don will claim great victory and let the world know that he has solved everything and should be a shoe-in for the Nobel Peace prize.
According to The Don, he already has a five -page love letter form Prime Minister Abe of Japan, in which Abe, endorses him for the Nobel prize. When asked, Abe’s response was: umm?
He will then say that he probably won’t get it because they don’t appreciate his greatness and his unfairly maligned by the Fake News. Poor Donald. “Baby, baby, stick your head in gravy…”
And The Don doesn’t want any old Nobel Prize; he wants the one Obama has. Can’t you see him up there on the podium demanding the committee cross out Obama’s name on his prize and replace it with his name: that will complete his goal of undoing everything Obama did.
Delusional Don’s belief that he should win the Nobel Prize is so absurd it is comical.
The only prize he should win hands down is the Ignoble Peace Prize. Wouldn’t it be a stroke of genius to offer him the award and then change scripts and humiliate him on the world stage?
Here’s the committee’s introduction:
Ladies and gentleman, this year’s Nobel goes to Donald J. Trump.
The U.S. president has distinguished himself like no other individual to receive this prize.
The Don is a lifetime criminal who has engaged in scamming people his entire life. He has stiffed workers, bullied and threatened detractors, laundered money, committed tax and insurance fraud and colluded with a foreign government to steal an election.
He also created a bogus university and preyed on unsuspecting students and bilked them for millions of dollars with nothing to show for it.
His greatest influence, his father, was a supporter of the KKK, and taught him the civic service and dark arts of denying blacks the right to live in their apartment buildings, for which he was sued twice by the United States Justice Department.
He is especially renowned for spreading the racist trope that President Obama was not an American citizen and a Muslim.
His support of human rights are quite remarkable: advocating White Supremacy, abandoning Puerto Rico after a hurricane devastated the island (Let them clean up the mess with paper towels!), banning Muslims from coming to the U.S., denying transgender individuals the right to serve in the U.S. military and because of his own hateful rhetoric, he has increased anti Semitism, his vitriol inspiring an increase of hate crimes against marginalized populations.
He has created a completely false narrative about an existential emergency at the U.S. border to deny people seeking asylum- a violation of international law- and his administration has immorally separated thousands of children from their families.
He has offered full-throated endorsement of dictators around the world.
He refused to acknowledge The Saudi Crown Prince’s involvement in the killing of a Washington Post journalist because of the money he and his immoral son-in-law, Jared Kushner, plan to make from numerous ventures, including illegally selling nuclear materials to the Saudis.
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