Michael Cohen intends to tell the House Oversight Committee Wednesday that President Donald Trump knew that Roger Stone was in contact with WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange about publishing DNC emails, according to his prepared remarks obtained by Politico.
Cohen wrote that he was present when Trump accepted a call from Stone during which Stone said that, per conversations with Assange, the hacked DNC emails would drop in the next few days.
“Mr. Trump responded by stating to the effect of ‘wouldn’t that be great,’” Cohen recalled, in direct contradiction to Stone’s testimony.
Cohen also concluded, in his testimony, that Trump knew about his son Donald Trump Jr.’s infamous Trump Tower meeting in June 2016 and responded to the plans for the meeting: “That’s good…let me know.”
He said that Trump considered Trump Jr. to have the “worst judgement of anyone in the world” and never would have given him the responsibility of setting up an important meeting without approval.
Cohen set the tone of his testimony from the first, calling Trump a “racist,” “conman” and “cheat.”
He added that Trump made out the checks to reimburse Cohen for Stormy Daniels’ hush money payment from his personal bank account, and paid in installments over months during his presidency.
Cohen also addressed previous false testimony that he’d given about Trump Tower Moscow, saying that negotiations over the possible real estate plan stretched much farther into the campaign than January 2016, and that Trump checked in on its progress frequently as he was running for President.
The testimony is peppered with examples of less damning, but quite embarrassing, episodes of Trump’s bad behavior. They include: calling black people “too stupid” to vote for him, threatening his schools not to reveal his grades or SAT scores and lying about his medical deferment to dodge the Vietnam draft.
Read Cohen’s prepared testimony:
