In an atmosphere of high drama and low tactics, Michael D. Cohen, President Donald Trump’s former lawyer, prepared for his potentially explosive public testimony about the president Wednesday even as a Republican member of Congress threatened to reveal what he said were Cohen’s extramarital affairs.
In an atmosphere of high drama and low tactics, Michael D. Cohen, President Donald Trump’s former lawyer, prepared for his potentially explosive public testimony about the president Wednesday even as a Republican member of Congress threatened to reveal what he said were Cohen’s extramarital affairs.
Cohen’s long-awaited appearance before the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, coming after he spent Tuesday behind closed doors, answering questions from the Senate Intelligence Committee, is likely to be among the more revealing and polarizing moments of Trump’s presidency.
With Trump in Vietnam meeting with the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un, Cohen has signaled that he intends to sketch a damning portrait of the president that includes criminal conduct after the president took office.
With the partisan stakes so high, Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., went after Cohen pre-emptively with a personal attack that some Democrats said amounted to witness intimidation.
“Hey @MichaelCohen212 – 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,” Gaetz wrote on Twitter.
In a statement, Lanny J. Davis, a lawyer and spokesman for Cohen, said he would not respond to what he called “Mr. Gaetz’s despicable lies and personal smears,” but called on both parties to “repudiate his words and his conduct.”
In his public testimony Wednesday, Cohen plans to describe “in granular detail” a scheme hatched in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election to make hush money payments to a pornographic film actress who claimed to have had an affair with Trump, people familiar with Cohen’s plans said. And he will say the scheme, which led to a campaign finance-related charge against him, was initiated by Trump.
Cohen will not be allowed to publicly discuss matters related to the continuing special counsel investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russian election manipulation efforts.
Those topics were sure to have been covered Tuesday in his closed-door appearance with the Senate Intelligence Committee and will be again Thursday in secret testimony to the House Intelligence Committee.
But even with the constraints on his testimony, Cohen is likely to lay out a picture of Trump that is fundamentally at odds with the take-charge, top-flight businessman persona he developed on the reality show “The Apprentice” over the course of a decade.
And coming as the special counsel, Robert Mueller, prepares to conclude his investigation, and with Democrats now firmly entrenched in the House majority starting their own, it marks the beginning of what could be a perilous new phase for Trump’s presidency.
Gaetz’s threat and the enraged reaction to it reflected the stakes on Capitol Hill in anticipation of Wednesday’s open hearing, at which Cohen is expected to allege a litany of misdeeds by Trump over the course of a decade, including his use of racist language, lies about his wealth and possible criminal conduct.
Neither Cohen nor members of the Senate Intelligence Committee provided details of his testimony Tuesday. Cohen began his meeting with the senators by apologizing for lying to them in 2017 about the duration of time during the 2016 campaign that the Trump Organization was in discussions about a Trump Tower project in Moscow, people familiar with his plans said.
Cohen emerged from a secure room in the Senate after more than eight hours of questioning and told reporters that he appreciated “the opportunity that was given to me” to tell the truth.
“I look forward to tomorrow to be able to, in my voice, tell the American people my story,” he said. “I am going to let the American people decide exactly who’s telling the truth.”
Senators who sat through the session indicated that Cohen’s testimony had made a strong impression on them. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said Cohen appeared to be “humbled by the experience he has been through and what he knows lies ahead of him.”
Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the panel’s top Democrat, said the committee’s investigation was the most important thing he is doing in the Senate. “Nothing I heard from today dissuades me from that view,” he said.
Trump and his allies have prepared for days for the appearance and for the potential for a split-screen drama as the president meets in Vietnam with Kim. The president’s aides have been anxious about the effect that the testimony might have on him.
Even before Gaetz’s tweet, Trump’s Republican allies in the House were prepared to aggressively question Cohen’s credibility. They have signaled that they will dig into his own past business dealings and publicly documented attempts to monetize his relationship with the president to try to paint Cohen as a liar fabricating stories to lessen his time in jail.
In a statement Tuesday morning, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, denounced Cohen as a “disgraced felon” who was already “going to prison for lying to Congress and making other false statements.”
“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,” she said.
Gaetz’s tweet took the effort to undermine Cohen to another level.
In a text, Gaetz rejected assertions that his tweet could amount to witness intimidation.
“It’s testing the veracity and character of Michael Cohen,” he wrote. “That is allowed.”
Like all members of Congress, Gaetz is covered under the “speech or debate” clause of the Constitution, which grants lawmakers wide latitude in their comments when Congress is in session and has been cited many times in the past as protection against punishment.
A federal law makes it a crime to intimidate or threaten people in an attempt to influence, delay or prevent their testimony in official proceedings, and a congressional hearing certainly counts.
It is not clear, though, whether a loose, ambiguous and public statement on social media qualifies and whether constitutional protections for congressional speech and debate would shield Gaetz from some forms of liability.
Randall D. Eliason, a former federal prosecutor who teaches white collar criminal law at George Washington University, said a successful criminal prosecution of Gaetz appeared to be unlikely on the available evidence.
“There’s a real tendency these days to leap immediately to allegations of criminal misconduct,” Eliason said. “There are a lot of things that are reprehensible but not criminal. I think proving the required corrupt intent to obstruct justice based on a single, public tweet would be pretty difficult.”
There are other possible remedies. The Constitution allows the House to “punish its members for disorderly behavior,” and it is at least conceivable that Gaetz could face some form of discipline from his colleagues.
Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr., D-N.J., said on Twitter that Gaetz’s comments were “grossly unethical and probably illegal,” raising the possibility of witness intimidation.
“House Ethics must investigate this disgrace and stain on our institution,” he wrote.
Gaetz later defended his comments in a brief speech on the House floor, saying it is “entirely appropriate for any member of this body to challenge the truthfulness, veracity and character of people who have a history of lying and have a future that undoubtably contains nothing but lies.”
Gaetz has developed a reputation as full-throated champion of Trump who, like the president, is unafraid of making statements many would consider outlandish. At a recent Judiciary Committee hearing on gun control, he got into an argument with parents of students killed last year in a massacre at a high school in Parkland, Florida, and sought to have them ejected.
Cohen’s team has suggested it is prepared for Republican efforts to impugn his credibility. Cohen pleaded guilty in November to violating campaign finance laws, financial crimes and lying to Congress in two separate prosecutions, one brought by federal prosecutors in Manhattan and the other by Mueller. Cohen was disbarred in New York state on Tuesday.
Davis declined to discuss details of Cohen’s testimony, saying only that Cohen “worked very hard on this moment to not only tell the truth, but to back it up with documents.” Davis said Cohen’s response to questions about his truthfulness will be “I take full responsibility, I lied in the past; now you have to decide if I’m telling the truth.”
More broadly, the public testimony provides Cohen with an opportunity to tell his story under penalty of perjury before an audience of millions of people, about two months before he is scheduled to report to prison.
Among the most explosive and potentially damning aspects of Cohen’s testimony before the oversight committee will be providing evidence of potential criminal conduct since Trump became president, according to the person familiar with the plans.
That potential conduct stems from reimbursements that were made to Cohen in 2017 for the hush money payments that he made to the pornographic film actress, Stormy Daniels. In October 2016, during the height of the presidential campaign, Cohen paid Daniels $130,000 to keep quiet about her claims of a previous affair with Trump.
Cohen was paid $35,000 a month under what was described by Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, as a retainer agreement, some of which was a reimbursement for the payment to Daniels. There was never a retainer agreement signed between Cohen and Trump or the Trump Organization, the person familiar with the payments said.
The Times has previously reported that the Trump Organization chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, helped orchestrate those payments. Cohen is likely to discuss Weisselberg’s role, people familiar with the plans for testimony said.
Cohen will also discuss how long Trump continued to ask about plans for a Trump Tower project in Moscow after the Iowa caucuses in February 2016. Cohen’s guilty plea in November encompassed lying to Congress in 2017 testimony to the intelligence committees about the duration of time over which the Moscow project discussions took place.
A lawyer for Cohen said in court filings last year that he lied in accordance with the president’s desire to minimize that project as much as possible.
Among other matters he will discuss in public, Cohen is prepared to describe Trump making racist statements, as well as lying or cheating in business. Last fall, Cohen told Vanity Fair that Trump frequently used racist language, telling the magazine that his former boss said during the 2016 campaign that “black people are too stupid to vote for me.”
He will also describe the president inflating or devaluing his net worth, referring to a financial statement of Trump’s that Cohen has in his possession, the person said. Those financial statements cannot be independently verified without Trump’s tax returns, which he has never made public, the person said, though they could give added justification to House Democrats who are preparing to formally use their authority to request the documents.
Cohen intends to bring copies of documents, including financial statements and other items, that will illustrate his claims and can be shown to the public, the person said.
Cohen has spent more than 70 hours with investigators for the special counsel investigating possible conspiracy by the Trump campaign with Russian officials, as well as with investigators from the Southern District of New York.
Cohen’s long-awaited appearance before the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, coming after he spent Tuesday behind closed doors, answering questions from the Senate Intelligence Committee, is likely to be among the more revealing and polarizing moments of Trump’s presidency.
With Trump in Vietnam meeting with the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un, Cohen has signaled that he intends to sketch a damning portrait of the president that includes criminal conduct after the president took office.
With the partisan stakes so high, Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., went after Cohen pre-emptively with a personal attack that some Democrats said amounted to witness intimidation.
“Hey @MichaelCohen212 – 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,” Gaetz wrote on Twitter.
In a statement, Lanny J. Davis, a lawyer and spokesman for Cohen, said he would not respond to what he called “Mr. Gaetz’s despicable lies and personal smears,” but called on both parties to “repudiate his words and his conduct.”
In his public testimony Wednesday, Cohen plans to describe “in granular detail” a scheme hatched in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election to make hush money payments to a pornographic film actress who claimed to have had an affair with Trump, people familiar with Cohen’s plans said. And he will say the scheme, which led to a campaign finance-related charge against him, was initiated by Trump.
Cohen will not be allowed to publicly discuss matters related to the continuing special counsel investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russian election manipulation efforts.
Those topics were sure to have been covered Tuesday in his closed-door appearance with the Senate Intelligence Committee and will be again Thursday in secret testimony to the House Intelligence Committee.
But even with the constraints on his testimony, Cohen is likely to lay out a picture of Trump that is fundamentally at odds with the take-charge, top-flight businessman persona he developed on the reality show “The Apprentice” over the course of a decade.
And coming as the special counsel, Robert Mueller, prepares to conclude his investigation, and with Democrats now firmly entrenched in the House majority starting their own, it marks the beginning of what could be a perilous new phase for Trump’s presidency.
Gaetz’s threat and the enraged reaction to it reflected the stakes on Capitol Hill in anticipation of Wednesday’s open hearing, at which Cohen is expected to allege a litany of misdeeds by Trump over the course of a decade, including his use of racist language, lies about his wealth and possible criminal conduct.
Neither Cohen nor members of the Senate Intelligence Committee provided details of his testimony Tuesday. Cohen began his meeting with the senators by apologizing for lying to them in 2017 about the duration of time during the 2016 campaign that the Trump Organization was in discussions about a Trump Tower project in Moscow, people familiar with his plans said.
Cohen emerged from a secure room in the Senate after more than eight hours of questioning and told reporters that he appreciated “the opportunity that was given to me” to tell the truth.
“I look forward to tomorrow to be able to, in my voice, tell the American people my story,” he said. “I am going to let the American people decide exactly who’s telling the truth.”
Senators who sat through the session indicated that Cohen’s testimony had made a strong impression on them. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said Cohen appeared to be “humbled by the experience he has been through and what he knows lies ahead of him.”
Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the panel’s top Democrat, said the committee’s investigation was the most important thing he is doing in the Senate. “Nothing I heard from today dissuades me from that view,” he said.
Trump and his allies have prepared for days for the appearance and for the potential for a split-screen drama as the president meets in Vietnam with Kim. The president’s aides have been anxious about the effect that the testimony might have on him.
Even before Gaetz’s tweet, Trump’s Republican allies in the House were prepared to aggressively question Cohen’s credibility. They have signaled that they will dig into his own past business dealings and publicly documented attempts to monetize his relationship with the president to try to paint Cohen as a liar fabricating stories to lessen his time in jail.
In a statement Tuesday morning, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, denounced Cohen as a “disgraced felon” who was already “going to prison for lying to Congress and making other false statements.”
“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,” she said.
Gaetz’s tweet took the effort to undermine Cohen to another level.
In a text, Gaetz rejected assertions that his tweet could amount to witness intimidation.
“It’s testing the veracity and character of Michael Cohen,” he wrote. “That is allowed.”
Like all members of Congress, Gaetz is covered under the “speech or debate” clause of the Constitution, which grants lawmakers wide latitude in their comments when Congress is in session and has been cited many times in the past as protection against punishment.
A federal law makes it a crime to intimidate or threaten people in an attempt to influence, delay or prevent their testimony in official proceedings, and a congressional hearing certainly counts.
It is not clear, though, whether a loose, ambiguous and public statement on social media qualifies and whether constitutional protections for congressional speech and debate would shield Gaetz from some forms of liability.
Randall D. Eliason, a former federal prosecutor who teaches white collar criminal law at George Washington University, said a successful criminal prosecution of Gaetz appeared to be unlikely on the available evidence.
“There’s a real tendency these days to leap immediately to allegations of criminal misconduct,” Eliason said. “There are a lot of things that are reprehensible but not criminal. I think proving the required corrupt intent to obstruct justice based on a single, public tweet would be pretty difficult.”
There are other possible remedies. The Constitution allows the House to “punish its members for disorderly behavior,” and it is at least conceivable that Gaetz could face some form of discipline from his colleagues.
Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr., D-N.J., said on Twitter that Gaetz’s comments were “grossly unethical and probably illegal,” raising the possibility of witness intimidation.
“House Ethics must investigate this disgrace and stain on our institution,” he wrote.
Gaetz later defended his comments in a brief speech on the House floor, saying it is “entirely appropriate for any member of this body to challenge the truthfulness, veracity and character of people who have a history of lying and have a future that undoubtably contains nothing but lies.”
Gaetz has developed a reputation as full-throated champion of Trump who, like the president, is unafraid of making statements many would consider outlandish. At a recent Judiciary Committee hearing on gun control, he got into an argument with parents of students killed last year in a massacre at a high school in Parkland, Florida, and sought to have them ejected.
Cohen’s team has suggested it is prepared for Republican efforts to impugn his credibility. Cohen pleaded guilty in November to violating campaign finance laws, financial crimes and lying to Congress in two separate prosecutions, one brought by federal prosecutors in Manhattan and the other by Mueller. Cohen was disbarred in New York state on Tuesday.
Davis declined to discuss details of Cohen’s testimony, saying only that Cohen “worked very hard on this moment to not only tell the truth, but to back it up with documents.” Davis said Cohen’s response to questions about his truthfulness will be “I take full responsibility, I lied in the past; now you have to decide if I’m telling the truth.”
More broadly, the public testimony provides Cohen with an opportunity to tell his story under penalty of perjury before an audience of millions of people, about two months before he is scheduled to report to prison.
Among the most explosive and potentially damning aspects of Cohen’s testimony before the oversight committee will be providing evidence of potential criminal conduct since Trump became president, according to the person familiar with the plans.
That potential conduct stems from reimbursements that were made to Cohen in 2017 for the hush money payments that he made to the pornographic film actress, Stormy Daniels. In October 2016, during the height of the presidential campaign, Cohen paid Daniels $130,000 to keep quiet about her claims of a previous affair with Trump.
Cohen was paid $35,000 a month under what was described by Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, as a retainer agreement, some of which was a reimbursement for the payment to Daniels. There was never a retainer agreement signed between Cohen and Trump or the Trump Organization, the person familiar with the payments said.
The Times has previously reported that the Trump Organization chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, helped orchestrate those payments. Cohen is likely to discuss Weisselberg’s role, people familiar with the plans for testimony said.
Cohen will also discuss how long Trump continued to ask about plans for a Trump Tower project in Moscow after the Iowa caucuses in February 2016. Cohen’s guilty plea in November encompassed lying to Congress in 2017 testimony to the intelligence committees about the duration of time over which the Moscow project discussions took place.
A lawyer for Cohen said in court filings last year that he lied in accordance with the president’s desire to minimize that project as much as possible.
Among other matters he will discuss in public, Cohen is prepared to describe Trump making racist statements, as well as lying or cheating in business. Last fall, Cohen told Vanity Fair that Trump frequently used racist language, telling the magazine that his former boss said during the 2016 campaign that “black people are too stupid to vote for me.”
He will also describe the president inflating or devaluing his net worth, referring to a financial statement of Trump’s that Cohen has in his possession, the person said. Those financial statements cannot be independently verified without Trump’s tax returns, which he has never made public, the person said, though they could give added justification to House Democrats who are preparing to formally use their authority to request the documents.
Cohen intends to bring copies of documents, including financial statements and other items, that will illustrate his claims and can be shown to the public, the person said.
Cohen has spent more than 70 hours with investigators for the special counsel investigating possible conspiracy by the Trump campaign with Russian officials, as well as with investigators from the Southern District of New York.