Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen turned on his former boss in a dramatic congressional appearance Wednesday, calling the US president a conman and inveterate liar who engaged in possibly illegal conduct while in office.
Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen turned on his former boss in a dramatic congressional appearance Wednesday, calling the US president a conman and inveterate liar who engaged in possibly illegal conduct while in office.
Cohen told the House Oversight Committee that Trump directed him last year to lie about hush payments made to a porn actress to silence her claims of an affair with Trump.
And Cohen asserted that personal lawyers for Trump and his family reviewed his written testimony to Congress in 2017 in which he lied about a Moscow real estate deal that was negotiated through the 2016 presidential race.
Cohen, who worked for Trump for over a decade as his lawyer and vice president in the Trump Organization, was sentenced in December to three years in prison for the hush payments and lies to Congress — both of which he said were to protect Trump — as well as for tax evasion.
But in a marathon hearing Cohen offered no fresh evidence that Trump or members of his campaign colluded with Russia during the race, or evidence of financial crimes by the president and his Trump Organization — subjects at the center of multiple federal and congressional investigations.
Instead, Cohen spoke damningly and at length about Trump’s character — depicting him as a morally corrupt figure who forces staff to constantly lie for him, and who cares only about himself.
