WASHINGTON (AP) — We tend to believe informants like Michael Cohen, studies show and psychologists say. It doesn’t matter if the person is behind bars…
WASHINGTON (AP) — We tend to believe informants like Michael Cohen, studies show and psychologists say.
It doesn’t matter if the person is behind bars or has confessed to lying, as Cohen has: Juries usually believe an informant, said Jeffrey Neuschatz, a University of Alabama psychologist who has studied jailhouse informants’ testimony for a decade.
Cohen, President Donald Trump’s former lawyer, pleaded guilty last year to lying to Congress. On Wednesday, he gave harsh testimony about Trump to a U. S. House committee, where he found a receptive audience from Democrats and drew the ire of Republicans who labeled him a felon and a liar. Trump, who had earlier called Cohen a “Rat” on Twitter, slammed the testimony as “fake.”
Neuschatz said Cohen fits in with the informants he has studied. And “people almost reflexively believe confessions. In the case of Cohen, he’s given a sort of confession here,” Neuschatz said.
