Michael Cohen on Wednesday claimed that he resisted taking a job at the White House, and even had a lawyer produce a memo advising against the idea. He said that after the election, he got the job he actually wanted.
“All I wanted was what I got: to be the personal attorney of the president of United States,” Cohen told the House Oversight Committee at a public hearing.
The comments came during a line of inquiry from Rep. Jim Jordan (OH), the top Republican on the committee. Jordan was trying to suggest that Cohen had turned on President Trump because he had not been offered a job at the White House.
“You didn’t get brought to the dance,” Jordan said.
In Cohen’s telling, it was determined that having him at the White House was a bad idea, in part, Cohen said, because he would not have the same attorney-client privilege with Trump that he had as his personal lawyer.
In order to handle some of the issues he referenced in his opening statement, which discussed hush money payments and other Cohen dealings on Trump’s behalf, “It would be best suited for me to not go in,” Cohen said.
He also said that Trump had “reamed” out former White House chief of staff Reince Priebus because Cohen hadn’t taken the the White House job
Cohen claimed he wanted to stay on as Trump’s personal lawyer, so he could watch his son finish his final year of high school and could await his daughter to return to New York after completing college.
However, as the hearing continued, CNN reporters reiterated their reporting that contradicted Cohen’s claims about not wanting a White House job. Other outlets reported that he desired a White House position as well.
. @DanaBashCNN says the biggest problem with Michael Cohen’s testimony in Round One is his insistence that he didn’t want to work in the White House.
“He very much wanted a job in the White House,” she says. @jaketapper adds: “All of our reporting suggests that’s not true.”— James Hohmann (@jameshohmann) February 27, 2019
