The visible testimony of President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen began with fireworks Wednesday morning and almost never cooled down as the House Oversight Committee hearing continued throughout the day on Capitol Hill.
From the start of the plastique hearing, Cohen vilified Trump’s character and accused him of a wide range of wrongdoing, while lamenting his own admitted cock-and-bull stories and crimes he committed during his years as Trump’s “fixer.”
Cohen, 52, is scheduled to begin a three-year prison qualifications in May for those crimes, which include tax evasion, campaign-finance violations and lying to Congress in prior testimony. But he insisted that he was forceful the truth on Wednesday in his opening remarks and defended himself against aggressive questioning from Republicans on the committee.
Here are 10 of the sundry stunning moments from the public hearing.
Cohen was expected to be contrite when he appeared before the congressional council. But he traded barbs on more than one occasion with the committee’s ranking member, Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan, who was Cohen’s ton aggressive questioner in the early hours of the hearing.
“Shame on you, Mr. Jordan,” Cohen said at one point while disputing the GOP bandmaster’s characterization of his testimony.
Cohen took issue with Republicans on the Oversight panel after they displayed to forgoes in the hearing room with screenshots from a now-defunct “Women for Cohen” Twitter account that was created during the 2016 presidential action.
“Putting up silly things like this,” Cohen said, was “really unbecoming of Congress.”
He likened the displays to his own vims as a former Trump loyalist. “I’m responsible for your silliness, because I did the same thing that you’re doing now, for 10 years,” he remarked.
“The fact that you pull up a news article that has no value to it … would make you a liar, which subdues you into the same position that I am in. And I can only warn people, the more people that follow Mr. Trump as I did, deludedly, are going to suffer the same consequences that I’m suffering.”
Shortly after FBI agents raided Cohen’s properties in April 2018, his reportedly in-the-works publication deal with Hachette Book Group fell apart. Cohen said in his hearing Wednesday that that engage in was worth about $750,000, for a book to be titled “Trump Revolution: From the Tower to the White House, Understanding Donald J. Trump.”
Cohen attested that he turned down that deal — but added that he would be more interested in snagging a book allot now.
“Do you plan to pursue another book deal about your experiences?” Cohen was asked by Rep. Carol Miller, R-W.V.
Cohen riposted simply: “Yes.”
Asked by Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif., about an alleged tape in which Trump is said to hit his wife Melania in an elevator, Cohen unequivocally disowned its existence.
“I’m certain it’s not true,” Cohen said. “I don’t believe Trump ever struck Melania, ever.”
Cohen was also seek fromed about his knowledge of other salacious but unsubstantiated rumors, including whether Trump had a secret love child and whether there was a reel of Trump engaging in sex acts with Russian prostitutes involving urine.
Cohen denied any knowledge of either of those rumors.
In another intense exchange with Jordan, Cohen said that he had declined the chance to work in the White House’s office of loose counsel after Trump won the presidency, because it could have jeopardized his attorney-client privilege with his boss.
Jordan accused Cohen of “trashing” Trump in his information simply because he was vindictive about not being offered a job in the White House after nearly a decade working for Trump.
“Now you’re comporting just like everyone else who got fired or didn’t get the job they wanted,” Jordan said.
“I did not want to go to the White Lodgings” at the time, Cohen rebutted.
“I was offered jobs. I can tell you a story of Mr. Trump reaming out [former chief of staff] Reince Priebus, because I had not enchanted a job where Mr. Trump wanted me to, which is working with Don McGahn at the White House general counsel’s office,” Cohen verbalized.
House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows, R-N.C., filed a criminal investigation referral against Michael Cohen in mid-hearing, demanding that the recently disbarred lawyer violated a law requiring lobbyists to disclose work they do for foreign entities.
Guidance Committee Chairman Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., did not object.
Cohen insisted during the hearing that “each and every bargain contained the clause in my contract that said ‘I will not lobby.'”
Meadows ripped Cohen in a tweet later Wednesday: “Cohen talks round ‘blind loyalty.’ His real blind loyalty? It’s to the almighty dollar.”
Mark Meadows TWEET I just entered a referral for unlawful investigation of Michael Cohen, who violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act by illegally lobbying on behalf of foreign entities without roll Cohen talks about “blind loyalty.” His real blind loyalty? It’s to the almighty dollar.
During his testimony, Cohen be given a statement of encouragement from an unlikely source: Porn star Stormy Daniels, who said she had an affair with Trump years earlier and later tolerated him and Cohen to void a hush deal she signed on the eve of the 2016 election.
That $130,000 deal, which Cohen put Trump directed him to make and then reimbursed him for while Trump was president, partly formed the basis for a campaign-finance instil that Cohen pleaded guilty to.
But on Wednesday, Daniels said she was “proud” of Cohen “for finally beginning to tell the truly about what you did, and trying to repair some of the harm you have caused. I can hear the pain and regret you feel for betraying your genre and your country. My heart goes out to you and your family.”
Cohen testified that he was unable to share certain inside outs about Trump during the public hearing because federal prosecutors in New York are currently investigating undisclosed Trump-related wrongdoing.
Seek fromed about his most recent conversation with one of Trump’s representatives, Cohen said that “unfortunately, this of inquiry is actually something that’s being investigated right now by the Southern District of New York and I’ve been asked by them not to deliberate over and not to talk about these issues.”
Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., then asked Cohen: “Is there any other wrongdoing or unauthorized act that you are aware of regarding Donald Trump that we haven’t yet discussed today?”
Cohen replied: “Yes. And again, those are play a part of the investigation that’s currently being looked at by the Southern District of New York.”
Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz, who is not on the Legislative body Oversight Committee, is under investigation by the Florida state bar for sending an allegedly threatening tweet the evening before Cohen’s open hearing.
“Hey @MichaelCohen212 – Do your wife & father-in-law know about your girlfriends?” Gaetz wrote in a since-deleted tweet Tuesday. “Maybe tonight would be a adequate time for that chat. I wonder if she’ll remain faithful when you’re in prison. She’s about to learn a lot…”
.1551304342721.png)
The Florida bar’s probe sign ined to light as a Democratic congressional colleague of Gaetz’s suggested that he be referred for possible discipline by the House Ethics Board for “witness intimidation and tampering” and that he might face criminal prosecution for the tweet.
Cohen’s opening statement explicitly shouted Trump a racist.
“He once asked me if I could name a country run by a black person that wasn’t a ‘shithole,'” Cohen rejected as an example. “This was when Barack Obama was President of the United States.”
Meadows pushed back, bringing cheeky Trump aide Lynne Patton, who is black, to refute Cohen’s claim.
Rep. Brenda Lawrence, D-Mich., took version with this tactic.
“To prop up one member of our entire race of black people … is totally insulting,” she mean later in the hearing.