Reuters
- Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s former longtime lawyer and fixer, spent another day in hearings on Capitol Hill on Wednesday.
- Cohen delivered to the House Intelligence Committee documents related to changes he said were made to his 2017 statement to Congress.
- Last week, Cohen said in a public testimony to the House Oversight and Reform Committee that Trump’s personal lawyers at the time made changes to his statement, specifically regarding details about a Trump Tower deal with Russia.
- According to The New York Times, the documents provided include "multiple drafts of his 2017 statement along with emails with Mr. Trump’s lawyers about its drafting."
Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s former longtime lawyer and fixer, spent another day in hearings on Capitol Hill on Wednesday.
Cohen delivered to the House Intelligence Committee documents related to changes he said were made to his 2017 statement to Congress.
"Mr. Cohen cooperated fully with the Committee, answered every question we asked of him during both interview sessions, and provided important testimony and materials relevant to the core of our probe and that will allow us to advance our investigation substantially," House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff said in a statement. "We look forward to his continued cooperation with Congress and law enforcement."
Cohen’s closed-door hearing with the House Intelligence Committee, which was conducted in two parts, capped off his fourth day testifying before Congress since February 26. Overall, CNN reported, Cohen has spent roughly 30 hours testifying before Congress.
The majority of those hearings have been closed; however, Cohen spent more than seven hours last week publicly testifying before the House Oversight and Reform Committee. He made a series of explosive allegations in his 20-page opening statement and again when answering questions from lawmakers.
One of those allegations is that Trump’s personal lawyers at the time made changes to his 2017 statement to Congress. During that testimony, Cohen falsely told lawmakers the Trump Organization’s Moscow project ended in January 2016, when it actually went on until at least June that year.
"There were changes made, additions — Jay Sekulow, for one," Cohen said during the hearing last week.
Cohen continued: "There were several changes that were made including how we were going to handle that message, which was — the message of course being — the length of time that the Trump Tower Moscow project stayed and remained alive."
Cohen also alleged that a lawyer for Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s daughter and son-in-law, respectively, also reviewed the statement, according to CNN.
After the hearing, Sekulow disputed Cohen’s allegation.
"Today’s testimony by Michael Cohen that attorneys for the president edited or changed his statement to Congress to alter the duration of the Trump Tower Moscow negotiations is completely false," he said in a statement.
INSIDER contacted Abbe Lowell, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner’s lawyer, about Cohen’s allegations, but we have not heard back.
According to The New York Times, the documents provided include "multiple drafts of his 2017 statement along with emails with Mr. Trump’s lawyers about its drafting." However, neither CNN, which first reported the story, nor The Times knew what the alleged changes were or the extent of them. INSIDER contacted Schiff’s office but did not hear back before publication.
Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 as part of two different investigations: one by the Southern District of New York, which charged him with bank fraud, campaign-finance violations, and tax fraud, and one from the special counsel Robert Mueller’s office, which charged him with lying to Congress about the length and extent of the Trump Organization’s Moscow project. He was sentenced to three years in prison.
In his testimony, Cohen also said Trump did not explicitly tell him to lie.
"Mr. Trump did not directly tell me to lie to Congress," he said in his opening statement. "That’s not how he operates. In conversations we had during the campaign, at the same time I was actively negotiating in Russia for him, he 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. In his way, he was telling me to lie."
Cohen will begin his prison sentence on May 6.
In a statement after Wednesday’s hearing, he said he would continue to cooperate with the investigation: "I have given them my assurance that any additional information that they need I’m here to cooperate and will continue to cooperate."
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See Also:
- Most Americans do not think Trump should be impeached, new poll shows
- Attorney General William Barr will not recuse himself from the Russia probe, setting up a possible showdown with Democrats over Mueller’s report
- Top Democrats want the White House to hand over information about Trump’s communications with Putin
Source: Business Insider – feedback@businessinsider.com (Sarah Gray)