Michael Cohen’s depiction this week of how the Trump Organization manipulated figures to change the value of the company opened up the possibility that Donald Trump’s strategy of using the illusion of vast wealth as an ego- and image-enhancing measure might also have been a crime.
„We got a lot of information that I think will be — we may not look into it in our committee, but one of the five or six committees will, and that’s one of things that we have to discuss to figure out,“ Cummings told reporters.
Cohen testified that, in 2014 when Trump was making a play for the Buffalo Bills football team, he provided financial statements to his long-time lender that his former attorney now claims were inflated.
Among the documents that Cohen provided to Congress were Trump’s financial statements for the years 2011,2012 and 2013. The documents showed a near doubling in Trump’s net worth from $4.26 billion in 2011 and $4.56 billion 2012 to $8.66 billion in 2013. The leap was attributed to $4 billion in „brand value.“
„These documents and others were provided to Deutsche Bank on one occasion when I was with him in our attempt to obtain money so that we can put a bid on the Buffalo Bills,“ Cohen told the House Oversight Committee.
A lawyer for the Trump Organization declined to comment to CNN Thursday. Earlier Thursday morning, Trump dismissed Cohen’s testimony during a news conference in Hanoi, Vietnam.
„He lied a lot,“ Trump said following his summit with North Korea leader Kim Jong Un. „He lied about so many different things.“
Trump never did get a loan from Deutsche Bank to bid for the football team. But Trump has borrowed more than $300 million in loans from the German lender.
Deutsche Bank has been the only major bank willing to loan to the Trump Organization for much of the last two decades.
