The highly anticipated return of Michael Cohen to Capitol Hill happened on Wednesday. One of his most interesting claims is that United States President Donald Trump was negotiating “hundreds of millions of dollars” worth of business ventures in Moscow, Russia while also campaigning for a seat in the White House in 2016.
Trump’s ex-lawyer pleaded guilty in 2018 for providing false statements while under oath in an earlier Congress hearing. He was then sentenced to three years in prison but does not have to report until May.
As expected, this conviction was used by Republican lawmakers in an apparent move to discredit Cohen’s testimony on Wednesday. However, with severed ties from Trump and an already impending jail time, Cohen returned to Congress to testify without worrying about his allegiance to the POTUS.
Cohen alleged Trump had knowledge of and “directed” the so-called Trump Moscow negotiations that transpired through the course of Presidential campaign in 2016. “He lied about it because he never expected to win the election. He also lied about it because he stood to make hundreds of millions of dollars on the Moscow real estate project,” Cohen added.
The now-disbarred lawyer explained that Trump’s purported intention to hide details of the Moscow talks was the reason why he previously lied in a Congressional hearing. “Mr. Trump had made clear to me, through his personal statements to me that we both knew were false and through his lies to the country, that he wanted me to lie,” Cohen further explained. “And he made it clear to me because his personal attorneys reviewed my statement before I gave it to Congress.”
Meanwhile, Trump was in Hanoi for his official meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un while the Cohen testimony unraveled. But POTUS made sure his sentiments were heard through a tweet about Cohen.
“Michael Cohen was one of many lawyers who represented me (unfortunately). He had other clients also. He was just disbarred by the State Supreme Court for lying & fraud. He did bad things unrelated to Trump. He is lying in order to reduce his prison time. Using Crooked’s lawyer,” Trump wrote.