If you were looking for fireworks during today’s Michael Cohen testimony in front of the House Oversight Committee you certainly got them. The former Trump lawyer and fixer spent over seven hours in front of congressional lawmakers looking for a little redemption after lying on the Hill the first time around ultimately helped land him in prison which he’ll begin serving a three-year sentence this coming May.
Anyways, there were certainly plenty of stand out moments from today’s hearing which we’ll go ahead and highlight below.
- GOP representatives Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows tried unsuccessfully to try and get today’s hearing postponed once again after Cohen submitted his testimony less than 24-hours prior to his testimony this afternoon.
- Michael Cohen in his opening statement referred to his former client Donald Trump as a ‘racist’ a ‘conman’ and a ‘cheat’ in some of the most scathing personal remarks towards the President today.
- Cohen disclosed that Donald Trump, Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg and himself discussed how Trump would reimbursement would take place after payments were made to Stormy Daniels in an effort to keep her quiet about an alleged affair just prior to the 2016 election. Cohen backed up this claim with two checks for $35K addressed to himself, one signed by Donald Trump Jr. and the other signed by Donald Trump. This bombshell in and of itself could be the most problematic for the POTUS considering it has everything to do with the campaign finance violations, a felony which are one the counts brought forth against Cohen that landed him in prison.
- Another bombshell revealed today was Cohen making the claim that Donald Trump had prior knowledge of the Hillary Clinton email dump by WikiLeaks. This according to Cohen was revealed during a phone conversation with Roger Stone who made mention that he just got off the phone with Julian Assange who said the Clinton email dump was about to take place. Stone and Assange have denied this claim.
- Although Russia questioning was suppose to be off the table during today’s testimony Cohen testified that “Mr. Trump’s desire to win would have him work with anyone.” Furthermore, Cohen was asked as to whether or not Trump had “the potential to cooperate or collude with a foreign power to win the presidency,” he answered: “Yes.”
- Regarding Cohen’s claims that Trump is a racist and comments made in private are far worse than what is portrayed in public. Cohen couldn’t prove this but did say that he’s recorded Trump around 100 times over the 10 year’s he’s worked for the now President of the United States.
- In another bombshell revelation, Cohen seemed to signify that Trump is being investigated for other potential crimes and that he (Cohen) has been in “constant contact with the Southern District of New York regarding ongoing investigations”.
- Cohen has talked with special counsel Robert Mueller on seven different occasions.
- As far as the Steele dossier goes one of the central components of it was that Michael Cohen traveled to Prague to meet Kremlin officials in 2016. Cohen however testified that he’s never been to Prague or the Czech Republic.
- Furthermore Cohen doesn’t believe there’s any nefarious visual tapes out there that the Steele dossier often eluded to.
- Cohen testified that Trump either misled or lied under oath about not knowing Felix Slater and associate with Cohen who worked with him on the Trump Tower Moscow project. Cohen testified that Slater had an office on the same floor as Trump in Manhattan’s Trump Tower.
- Cohen mentioned that Donald Trump directed him to threaten individuals on his behalf in upwards of 500 times. Likewise, one of the documents submitted by Cohen was this letter to Fordham University threatening legal action against the institution if they released Trump’s academic transcripts without his consent.
- Cohen disclosed to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that Donald Trump would inflate the total value of his assets for insurance purposes and then deflate those numbers for larger tax breaks. This was a practice that Cohen says Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg was aware of.
- Cohen hired someone to rig online polls back in 2014 and did so under the direction of Donald Trump.
