Michael Cohen’s public testimony in front of the House Oversight Committee Wednesday was as combative as expected, with plenty of congressional grandstanding and partisan fireworks.
But amid the barbs were several revelations that shed new light on the Russia probe, on President Trump’s hush money payments, and on other Trump controversies Cohen was involved in.
Here’s a look at what we learned:
Cohen Is Assisting With Other Unspecified Probes With Trump Links
Perhaps the biggest bombshell is what Cohen couldn’t discuss Wednesday. Asked specifically about his communications with Trump after an FBI raid on his home, and more broadly about other Trump misconduct the committee hadn’t discussed yet, Cohen in both instances said that he couldn’t answer those questions because of ongoing investigations in the Southern District in New York.
Later on the hearing, he said again that he was assisting prosecutors on those questions.
“There are ongoing investigations currently being conducted that have nothing to do with this committee or Congress that I am assisting in,” Cohen said.
Trump’s Personal Attorneys Edited His 2017 Prepared Testimony About Russia Biz Dealings
Cohen testified that Trump’s attorneys, and specifically Jay Sekulow, edited his prepared testimony to Congress in 2017, which he later admitted included false statements about his work on a Trump Tower project in Moscow.
“There were changes made, additions,” Cohen said, adding that the main alteration was “the length of time that the Trump Tower Moscow project stayed and remained alive.”
As part of a joint defense agreement, the draft testimony was circulated to Trump’s legal team, as well as to Abbe Lowell, who is representing Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, Cohen said.
Following the hearing, Sekulow denied that Trump’s attorneys edited Cohen’s statement to change the length of time the Trump Org was in negotiations for the Moscow project.
Additionally, Cohen revealed that he met with Sekulow at the White House at President’s request in May 2017.
They met to discuss “document production as well as my appearance before” the congressional committees, Cohen testified.
Ivanka And Don Jr. Were Briefed Around 10 Times On Trump Tower Moscow
Cohen went into more detail about how he kept Trump and his family appraised of the developments with the Trump Tower Moscow project through 2016. He briefed Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr. “approximately 10” times, he said. As for Trump himself, he would tell Cohen, “Michael, walk with me,” Cohen said.
“He was heading to a rally, or to a car, and as I was walking him to the elevator, he would ask me a series of questions, quickly,” he said, adding that he would “report back” to Trump after “each communication that I had.”
Trump Had Advanced Knowledge Of 2016 Hacked Email Dumps
Cohen dropped a major bomb in the opening remarks of his testimony, in which he recalled overhearing Trump on a July 2016 phone call with Roger Stone during which Stone told the then-candidate about an imminent hacked email dump.
“Mr. Trump responded by stating to the effect of ‘wouldn’t that be great,’” Cohen testified.
Later in the hearing Cohen elaborated more about the episode. Trump had put Stone on speaker phone, in Cohen’s retelling. Stone claimed in the call that he had been in contact with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange and told Trump that there’d be a dump of emails damaging to Hillary Clinton’s campaign in the next few days, according to the testimony.
Cohen clarified that he had no knowledge whether Trump was aware of the “sum and substance” of the email dump.
Asked who the committee could talk to in order to corroborate Cohen’s account of the phone call, he suggested Trump’s longtime assistant Rhona Graff.
Graff alerted Trump of Stone’s call — yelling to Trump “Roger is on line one” — according to Cohen’s testimony.
Cohen Talked Hush Money Payments With Trump In 2018
Cohen also testified at length about the hush money payments he orchestrated on Trump’s behalf to women who claimed to have had sexual encounters with the President.
He said that in February 2018, more than a year after Trump took office, Trump was still directing him on how to message the payments.
Cohen said that Trump told him to state publicly “that he was not knowledgeable of these reimbursements and that he wasn’t knowledgeable of my actions.”
Trump, Don Jr., And Weisselberg All Signed Hush Money Reimbursement Checks
Cohen, perhaps in anticipation of doubts about his credibility, provided the proverbial receipts, in the form of a check that Trump himself signed that Cohen said was reimbursement for the payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels.
But it was not just Trump who signed the checks — 11 in total — that paid Cohen back for securing Daniels’ silence. According to Cohen, Donald Trump Jr. and Trump Organization exec Allen Weisselberg signed at least one of the other checks, a copy of which Cohen provided to the committee.
Cohen Reveals Why He Used Line Of Credit To Pay Off Alleged Trump Paramour
A relatively minor but ongoing mystery surrounding the payment to Daniels was why Cohen used a home equity line of credit to make it.
“The reason that I used the home equity line of credit as opposed to cash that I had in the same exact bank is because I didn’t want my wife to know about it,” Cohen said at a House Oversight Committee hearing. “She handles all of the banking, and I didn’t want her coming to me and asking, ‘what’s the $130,000 for?’”
Trump Told Cohen He Didn’t Want Outside Experts Scrutinizing His Tax Returns
Cohen provided an alternative reason that President Trump, who’s claimed to be under audit, hasn’t allowed his tax returns to be publicly released.
Trump told Cohen, in Cohen’s account, that “what he didn’t want was to have an entire group of think tanks that are tax experts run through his tax return and start ripping it to pieces.” Trump feared such scrutiny would result in an audit and eventually in penalties, according to the testimony.
Cohen couldn’t say for sure whether Trump was, in fact, under an audit. But he said he had sought documentation of an audit to help him to respond to press inquiries about the returns and never received any.
I don’t think today’s testimony changed anyone’s mind. If you’ve been paying attention, none of this is new or surprising. If you haven’t been paying attention, you probably didn’t watch this.
Either way, Trump supporters will just write today’s testimony off as a bunch of deep state lies, fake news or whatever.
So here are the highlights from the hearing. I’m focused on areas of criminal liability:
Cohen admitted that he met with Trump, Jay Sekulow to discuss his testimony to Congress in advance (Gerry Connolly and others). Trump reiterated the false talking point that he expected Cohen to align to. That’s subornation of perjury. More than that, Cohen shared the draft of his statement with Sekulow and Abbe Lowell (!!!). They edited that document and focused specifically on the material issue of the timeline. The main false message was that TT Moscow discussions ended in Jan 2016 before the Iowa caucuses. That was a lie. They stayed alive through Election Day. This not only proves Buzzfeed’s point, but it also implicates members of Trump’s legal and political team in a conspiracy to suborn perjury.
Cohen has a very good memory of the conversation on July 17 or 18, 2016 between Roger Stone and Trump on the speaker phone in which Stone relayed to Trump that Wikileaks had DNC data and was about to do a release. He also said on more than 1 occasion that the Special Counsel likely has the evidence to substantiate the Trump-Stone conversation. The date is significant because that is the exact date that wikileaks received data from GRU (this is in the GRU indictment). This confirms that Roger Stone was connected and almost real-time to the discussions that the Russians were having with WikiLeaks to use WikiLeaks as a release point for stolen DNC/Clinton campaign emails. In addition, in the following week (during the middle of the democratic convention) when
Trump made his “Russia if you’re listening” statement, he knew that there was a connection between the Russians and WikiLeaks. Transactions in this regard are part of a criminal conspiracy. He knew the Russians and WikiLeaks had a thing going on to hack and release emails. He encouraged it, never reported it to the FBI, and saw to take advantage of it when his campaign needed the help. Again, I have a hard time believing that the special counsel would allow Cohen to speak on this matter if they didn’t have indictments lined up. I don’t think that Cohen would’ve even spoken about the Stone-Trump conversation this much unless the OSC had the evidence to back it up. I don’t think this makes it into the statement or hearing otherwise.
The Democrats and others (including Amash) did a good job of getting Cohen to explain how Trump induces people to lie and suborns perjury. This is very mob like and is the kind of thing that people like Mueller have been prosecuting for a long time.
Katie Hill got Cohen to admit that Trump coordinated and directed false statements made by Cohen to the media about the Stormy Daniels matter. Others elicited from Cohen an admission that Trump was fully aware as to how Cohen was to be reimbursed for the payments, and how stormy Daniels and Karen McDougall were to be paid off. He also confirms that Trump’s primary motivation for keeping the payment secret was to prevent a political controversy from corrupting days before the vote. In other words, Individual-1 has met the threshold for criminal liability under the campaign finance laws. This is why the SDNY named Individual-1 in the Cohen charging documents.
Harley Rouda gets Cohen to admit that Trump lied under oath in a civil trial about Felix Sater’s role in the Trump Org. Sater even had an office on the 26th floor where Trump had his office. Cohen took over Sater’s office after Sater left.
Cohen admits that he is working with the SDNY on several other investigations, including at least one involving Trump (feels like more though). It is tied to Trump’s communications with Cohen about 2 months following the FBI raid (this would be in June 2018). (Raja Krishnamoorthi and others).
Cohen admits that David Pecker ran a hush money scheme with Donald Trump for years relating to women and several other matters. (Carolyn Maloney and others).
Roger Stone has likely violated his gag order by making at least 2 comments on his case relating to Cohen’s testimony. The reason his attorney didn’t make a statement? Probably because what Roger said is not true. I hope he gets brought before the court and sent to jail. [follow-up: some on twitter have pointed out that Judge Jackson may have allowed for Stone to declare his innocence and that these comments may fall into that exception].
Trump may have committed loan/bank fraud. As one example, he overvalued his assets in order to secure a loan from Deutsche Bank to buy the Buffalo Bills.
Cohen admits that Donald Trump Jr. signed one of the hush money reimbursement checks. That implicates Junior in an additional felony.
I would also add that both Cohen and the Dems have done an admirable job of describing and condemning the witness intimidation tactics of Trump and his crew (including Gaetz). We’ve accepted a lot of Trump’s harassing statements as normal. This hearing brought us back to a time when we would normally punish such behavior as anti-social and illegal. I think it’s going to be tougher for Trump to use these tactics after McCabe and now Cohen have provided a sustained critique. We have to keep political pressure on and force the DOJ to take investigations and prosecutions of these matters seriously.
In addition, Cohen said he briefed Ivanka and Junior about TT Moscow at least 10 times. That contradicts Junior’s testimony and Ivanka’s prior public statements.
Ro Khanna does an admirable job of getting Cohen to identify Junior as Executive 2 in the SDNY docs and for confirming that this was garden variety fraud involving 4 individuals (Trump, Junior, Weisselberg and Cohen) and only 1 of those 4 is going to jail. Weisselberg cooked up the scheme to pay the fees out over 12 months to make it look like a legal retainer agreement, which was approved by Trump. Cohen implies that the matter is continuing to be investigated by SDNY. Khanna brings clarity and urgency to this crime, which the GOP and media have downplayed. The check signed by Trump is a smoking gun. This is fraud. It’s not directly connected to Russia, but it’s a major crime nonetheless, part of which was committed in the Oval Office. Trump should be removed from office for this alone.
Cohen admits to Jimmy Gomez that he asked the IRS for a copy of the audit that Trump often spoke of as the reason to avoid releasing his tax returns and got nothing back. There is/was no audit. Trump admitted to Cohen that he did not want to release his tax returns because he did not want to go under audit. Gomez does a nice job of setting the predicate for subpoenaing the tax returns as a basis to determine whether he is at risk from foreign influence and conflicts.
AOC was very effective. On AMI, Cohen names David Pecker, Barry Levine and Dylan Howard as the people who would have the ‘vault’ of information on all the hush schemes that Pecker and Trump have run together to protect Trump. On asset inflation, Cohen admits that Trump inflated assets for insurance purposes and names Alan Weisselberg, Matthew Calamari, and Ron Lieberman. Cohen also points to the Trump org as the source for the financial statements/tax returns which would yield more information. Next, she goes to the issue of Trump’s golf courses (Trump Links, Bronx). Trump has engineered schemes of using publicly built golf courses where Trump keeps the money in a sweetheart deal and devalues assets to avoid paying taxes. Trump said that the golf club in Jupiter, FL was worth $50 milll but for local tax authorities he pitched the value at $5 million. In doing so he engineered deductions by demanding them from the tax authorities based on the artificial devaluation. AOC also ties it to the NYT expose on how Trump undervalued all of the assets transferred to him from his family in order to save money on taxes. He points to Alan Weisselberg and the tax returns for info sources. AOC has perhaps laid the strongest basis for subpoenaing Trump’s tax returns.
…and Weisselberg comes back into focus. He’s been Trump’s accountant for decades. He seems to have an aura of probity but I don’t see how that’s possible. The only dirtier job in the whole organisation would be groom of the privy stool. I don’t know how far his immunity goes but he’s a co-conspirator according to Cohen.
Dirty deeds indeed.
I do think this hearing was a game changer.
Trump has never been exposed as he was today. These are garden variety felonies wrapped up in a larger conspiracy. Each individual crime is understandable, explainable and prosecutable. It’s go time, folks. Over the next 3 months, the big shoes drop.