House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-MD)
Republicans are having some major difficulties with former Donald Trump personal attorney Michael Cohen‘s testimony before the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Reform yesterday. Cohen sat for over 7 hours, giving testimony about the workings of the Trump Organization that was riveting, and at times stunning. Notably, the committee Republicans rarely if ever attacked Cohen’s specific allegations about Trump wrongdoings and illegal acts. Instead, they, and Republicans in the media and elsewhere, simply painted Cohen as “a liar” based on his guilty plea in two previous cases, one of which involves scheming with Donald Trump to cover up hush money payments to porn star Stephanie Clifford a/k/a Stormy Daniels, as well as lying for Trump about efforts to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. Apparently, these Republicans realize that they face the following problems regarding Michael Cohen:
First, for 10 years, Cohen lied to protect Trump, for example, refuting allegations about Trump’s hush money payments to Daniels and other matters. If Republicans merely want to call Cohen “a liar,” that means his refutations of these allegations against Trump were false, and thus the allegations themselves are true.
Second, Cohen brought exhibits with him to the hearing, some of which were put up on a big screen for all to see. The most significant of these exhibits are the $35,000 checks to Cohen, one dated August 1, 2017 and signed by Trump, and one dated March 17, 2017 signed by Donald Trump Jr. and Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg. Cohen explained that these were two of 12 checks paid to reimburse Cohen for the hush money Cohen paid to Stormy Daniels, at Trump’s direction, to cover up Trump’s affair with Daniels. Cohen went into detail about how he first paid Daniels out of his own pocket, then was reimbursed in a series of installments of $35,000 each, in order to hide the fact that Trump was illegally paying Daniels this hush money in order that she not go public about the affair and hurt Trump’s election chances. As the checks make clear, this illegal hush money scheme, i.e., the reimbursements to Cohen, occurred well into Trump’s term in the White House, and the payments were made in monthly installments in order falsely to appear as payments to Cohen for regular legal fees.
Third, Cohen had no incentive to lie to the Committee members yesterday. On the contrary, as Cohen mentioned many times, he is going to prison this May pursuant to his guilty plea. His truthful testimony, if helpful, could potentially reduce his sentence. Conversely, if Cohen lied again and was caught doing so (and there’s every reason to believe further lies by him would be discovered just as his original lies were), that would be an additional federal crime that could increase rather than reduce his prison time. Moreover, Cohen no longer works for Trump, and is thus free from lying for Trump as part of his employment.
Cohen, whose demeanor was contrite for much of the day, told the committee that he made mistakes, accepts responsibility, feels remorseful, and hopes to redeem himself. Cohen’s concluding statement also sounded several patriotic notes, ending with:
I pray the country doesn’t make the same mistakes that I have made.
Democratic Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings responded, in an emotional closing statement:
I hope a small part of this is for our country to be better. If I hear you correctly, you are crying out for getting back to normal. Sounds to me like you want to make sure our democracy stays intact.
Photo by AFGE, used under Creative Commons license. https://is.gd/ZkFmAJ
