President Trump on Wednesday claimed Michael Cohen, his former lawyer and personal fixer, is lying to reduce his prison sentence — hours after it was reported that Cohen will testify before Congress that Trump is a “con man” and “racist.” Trump made the assertion in a tweet sent from Vietnam, where he is to negotiate a denuclearization agreement with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. “Michael Cohen was one of many lawyers who represented me (unfortunately). He had other clients also,” Trump wrote at about 4:10 p.m. local time. “He was just disbarred by the State Supreme Court for lying & fraud. He did bad things unrelated to Trump. He is lying in order to reduce his prison time. Using Crooked’s lawyer!” he added. Cohen is set to testify before the House Oversight and Reform Committee on Wednesday that Trump is a “racist,” “con man” and “cheat,” according to a copy of his prepared remarks that were released Wednesday morning. According to the remarks, Cohen will testify that Trump knew Roger Stone was communicating with WikiLeaks about the release of stolen emails that were damaging to Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential campaign. He will also testify that Trump reimbursed him for hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels — and also told him to lie to first lady Melania Trump about the alleged affair. Cohen will also detail racist comments allegedly made by Trump, including a time when he asked him if he could “name a country run by a black person that wasn’t a ‘s–thole.’” Cohen’s testimony comes as he prepares to spend three years in jail after pleading guilty to a slew of crimes, including lying to Congress.<doc-sep>WASHINGTON – Long before Michael Cohen came to Congress to cast President Donald Trump as a "con man" and possibly a criminal, the president's longtime personal attorney had given doubters plenty to chew on. Cohen arrived at House Oversight and Government Reform Committee's much-anticipated hearing on Wednesday just two months removed from pleading guilty to lying to Congress about his own dealings with Trump. And a little more than two months from now, Cohen must begin a three-year prison sentence that has raised as many questions about his own credibility as that of his former boss, whom Cohen called a “racist,” a “con man” and a “cheat.” Cohen, who once boasted that he would take a bullet for the president, said Trump implicitly encouraged him to lie to Congress in 2017 about the pursuit of a Moscow tower project; ordered hush money payments to women in violation of campaign finance laws; and knew in advance that WikiLeaks would release stolen emails from Hillary Clinton. Over six hours of sworn testimony, Cohen linked Trump more directly than ever to the criminal investigations that have loomed over his presidency. Start the day smarter:Get USA TODAY's Daily Briefing in your inbox And he offered congressional lawmakers a road map to witnesses and documents he said could corroborate his claims for congressional investigators examining the president and his businesses. Still, while committee chairman Elijah Cummings, D-Md., billed the extraordinary hearing as a “search for the truth,” the spectacle ended more than six hours later with the same basic question as when it began: Whom to believe? "Some will certainly ask, 'If Mr. Cohen was lying then (when he defended Trump for more than a decade as his trusted attorney), why should we believe him now?" Cummings asked. "That is a legitimate question." The question posed by the chairman would later track an oft-repeated refrain by Republican committee members whose attacks on Cohen's veracity shadowed the attorney's stunning accounts of his boss' conduct. "Anything that Michael Cohen asserts comes combined with credibility issues. That's just par for the course," said Renato Mariotti, a former federal prosecutor in Chicago. "But, it's not a high bar to be more truthful than Trump on these issues." Indeed, Trump has offered a series of conflicting statements about hush money deals to quiet women who said they had affairs with him, first saying he knew nothing of the payments then admitting they "came from me." It all came to a head Wednesday when Cohen offered Congress copies of checks with Trump's distinctive signature that Cohen said were made to repay him for the hush money deals. Lawmakers, Republicans and Democrats alike, agreed Cohen had lied in the past, but they disagreed whether his word should be trusted now. Cummings, after the hearing, said he found Cohen believable and thought the hearing shed new light on whether the president may have committed a crime. Yet throughout the daylong spectacle, Republicans cast Cohen as a liar – someone who sought to gain financially from book and TV deals by bashing the president. Republican Rep. Paul Gosar put it plainly: "Look at the old adage that our moms taught us: 'Liar, liar, pants on fire.' No one should ever listen to you and give you credibility. It's sad." Trump's campaign even chimed in, calling Cohen a felon, liar and questioning the evidence Cohen provided to Congress. "Michael Cohen is a felon, a disbarred lawyer, and a convicted perjurer who lied to both Congress and the special counsel in a deliberate and premeditated fashion," campaign spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany said. "This is the same Michael Cohen who has admitted that he lied to Congress previously. Why did they even bother to swear him in this time?" Throughout the hours of testimony, Republicans repeatedly asserted that Cohen had admitted to lying to Congress and was testifying in hopes for a lighter prison sentence. Mariotti said Cohen's testimony wouldn't change the three-year sentence handed down by a judge, adding that his comments were just of accounts that he has already provided to prosecutors. But there were very real risks. Among those certain to have monitored Cohen's testimony were federal prosecutors in Manhattan and those assigned to Russia special counsel Robert Mueller. Both teams have obtained testimony from Cohen for their investigations and probably want to be sure Cohen's testimony before Congress tracks the information he has provided them. Any slip could cost him a chance at reduced prison time or new criminal charges for lying to Congress. "Of course, Cohen appearing before Congress wasn't an act of charity. He wants to improve his public reputation, which has been decimated," Mariotti said. "And to a large part, I think this has helped." Federal prosecutors already have backed parts of Cohen's account. Justice Department lawyers said in a court filing in December that Cohen made hush money payments to two women at Trump's direction. And Cohen confirmed on Wednesday that he was continuing to cooperate with federal investigators who seized records from his home and office and customarily seek out evidence far broader than the word of someone trying to earn himself a shorter prison sentence. Elizabeth de la Vega, a federal prosecutor of 20 years, said she found Cohen believable, adding that conservatives on the committee didn't seem to even dispute the nature of Cohen's allegations, attacking only his character. "The one glaring thing they did not do was talk about any of the facts," de la Vega said. "They just hammered on what we know: Michael Cohen has lied and done bad things." Helping his case, Cohen sought to prove some of his claims with documents he kept during his decade working under Trump as his right-hand man. He brought along copies of checks, one signed by Trump while he was president, that Cohen said was repayment for a hush money deal with porn star Stormy Daniels after she said she had an affair with the president. Cohen also included a letter he sent, which he claimed Trump directed him to write, in which he threatened the president's alma mater with a lawsuit if his grades were released. He also provided copies of documents detailing Trump's finances for several years and said Trump inflated his assets to get better insurance rates and loans from banks. The documents offered support for some of Cohen's claims – particularly that Trump had personally reimbursed him for the 2016 payoffs – but did little to corroborate others. Cohen's attorney, Lanny Davis, had released a secretly recorded audio recording of Trump that showed the president was aware and approved of the scheme to quiet claims by women. "You have to look at the big picture," de la Vega pointed out. She said the test of truth shouldn't just focus on Wednesday and Cohen's testimony. It's about the whole of what is known and the information still being investigated by federal prosecutors in New York and by Mueller. "This test of credibility is about everyone and everything we know thus far," de la Vega said. "You have all these other factors and evidence that's been part of a number of cases." Even if lawmakers do not believe Cohen, he left them with names of other witnesses and a trail to follow in investigating Trump's businesses, his presidential campaign and whether there is any truth to his former lawyer's searing accusations. "The question becomes: Where do we go from here?" Cummings said after Wednesday's hearing. He said that between Cohen's testimony and evidence, lawmakers have a lot to study. "If you asked me exactly where we're going, I can't tell you exactly the areas we'll go in, but we will do things in a very methodical way, a very careful way," he said. "I thought (Cohen) brought a lot to the table; he described the Donald Trump that he knows. And we'll see where we go from there."<doc-sep>Michael Cohen – President Trump’s former personal attorney – is spending three days testifying before congressional committees this week, making a series of accusations against his former client. But with his long record of lying again and again, why should anyone believe a word Cohen says regarding Trump or anything else? Cohen, after all, is scheduled to begin a three-year prison sentence in May after pleading guilty to lying to the Internal Revenue Services about the taxes he owed, lying to financial institutions and lying to Congress. And the New York Post reported Tuesday that the lying lawyer has been disbarred in New York state. RNC TELLS MICHAEL COHEN TO ‘HAVE FUN IN PRISON,’ AS GOP READIES WAR ROOM TO PUSH BACK ON TESTIMONY Cohen testified behind closed doors Tuesday before the Senate Intelligence Committee. But on Wednesday he’ll get maximum TV exposure for his unproven allegations against the president when he testifies before the House Committee on Oversight and Reform. That will be followed by another day of closed-door testimony before the House Intelligence Committee on Thursday. “I really appreciate the opportunity that was given to me to clear the record and to tell the truth,” Cohen said in brief comments to reporters Tuesday. “And I look forward to tomorrow, to being able to, in my voice, to tell the American people my story, and I’m going to let the American people decide exactly who’s telling the truth.” But in deciding if Cohen is telling the truth now, it’s impossible to ignore his failure to tell the truth in the past. White House press secretary Sarah Sanders stated the obvious Tuesday when she said: “It’s laughable that anyone would take a convicted liar like Cohen at his word and pathetic to see him given another opportunity to spread his lies.” It turns out Cohen secretly recorded phone calls with Trump – hardly ethical behavior for a lawyer dealing with a client. And he has spent dozens of hours talking with federal prosecutors in New York City and from the office of Special Counsel Robert Mueller about his own crimes and making allegations of wrongdoing by President Trump. Lawyers are supposed to respect the attorney-client privilege of confidentially regarding their communications with their clients. But by turning on President Trump and disclosing their communications and alleged communications, Cohen has shown he has as much regard for upholding the privilege as he has for telling the truth. House Democrats are relying on Cohen to help them fulfill their campaign promises to aggressively investigate the president’s activities in the private sector, in his personal life and in government. Cohen said in 2017 that he would “take a bullet” to protect Trump – still another lie. Back then, he was demonized by the anti-Trump crowd. But now he’s been embraced by many of his former critics for making all sort of charges against Trump, who provided him with a paycheck for 12 years until they parted ways last year. House Democrats are relying on Cohen to help them fulfill their campaign promises to aggressively investigate the president’s activities in the private sector, in his personal life and in government. But relying on Cohen to get to the truth raises the question if Democrats are more interested in digging up dirt on the president than digging up the facts. Can we really expect a “full and credible” account from Michael Cohen? Or will his testimony be just another piece in what acting U.S. Attorney Robert Khuzami of the Southern District of New York called Cohen’s “pattern of deception,” designed to make himself look good and to shift blame for his misdeeds onto the president? Khuzami has described Cohen as someone who “repeatedly used his power and influence for deceptive ends.” Cohen’s illegal conduct was “marked by a pattern of deception that permeated his professional life” and he engaged in “extensive, deliberate, and serious criminal conduct,” according to Khuzami. Cohen pleaded guilty in federal court to willful tax evasion, false statements to financial institutions, illegal campaign contributions, and making false statements to Congress. Khuzami noted that all of the crimes bore a “common set of characteristics.” Each involved “deception” that was “motivated by personal greed and ambition.” In his testimony Cohen will swear an oath to tell the truth. But he previously swore – falsely and repeatedly – that the tax returns he submitted to the IRS were “true and accurate.” Khuzami faulted Cohen for his submissions to prosecutors in which Cohen “repeatedly attempted to minimize the seriousness of his decision not to report millions of dollars of income over a period of years by blaming his accountant” – assertions that prosecutors said “are simply false.” Do we have any reason to expect Cohen to change his stripes in his testimony before Congress? Cohen didn’t lie to just the IRS and prosecutors. Khuzami’s sentencing memorandum noted that Cohen told “numerous financial institutions” a “long-series of self-serving lies” about his assets and liabilities. Well, at least Cohen’s behavior is consistent! Cohen previously lied to Congress about a real estate deal in Russia that the Trump organization had been negotiating for 30 years. Nothing about the deal itself was unlawful, but Cohen’s ham-handed lies seemed intended to minimize the fact that he was still discussing this deal during the first half of 2016. Now that the House Oversight Committee is run by Democrats, Cohen has every incentive to shift the blame for this potentially embarrassing deal to President Trump. He probably has little fear that Democrats will want to see him prosecuted for misrepresenting what happened – as long as his testimony advances the narrative that Donald Trump is guilty of something. This is because congressional Democrats aren’t really interested in Michael Cohen. They’re interested in using Michael Cohen to make accusations of wrongdoing against President Trump. There’s no doubt that Cohen will be asked about the hush-money payments he made to two women in exchange for not making public their unproven allegations – denied by Trump – of extramarital affairs that supposedly occurred many years before Trump ran for president. Cohen pleaded guilty to breaking campaign finance laws by making these payments. But as I have explained before, many campaign finance experts and former members of the Federal Election Commission do not believe that the payments actually broke any federal law. As a former member of the Federal Elections Commission and an attorney who has worked extensively on election law issues I share this view. Yet even in arranging the payments to the two women, the sentencing memorandum notes, Cohen “used sophisticated tactics to conceal his misconduct.” And when news stories about the payments began to surface, the sentencing memorandum says Cohen responded by telling “shifting and misleading stories.” If members of the House Oversight Committee want to know why Michael Cohen has embraced a “pattern of deception” they should be sure to read the last part of the sentencing memorandum. Khuzami says Cohen’s behavior was driven by “his own ambition and greed.” Originally, Cohen expected to be “given a prominent role and title in the new (Trump) administration,” according to the sentencing memorandum. When that didn’t materialize, he “successfully convinced numerous major corporations to retain him as a ‘consultant’ who could provide unique insights about and access to the new administration.” That turned out to be a lie as well. Khuzami notes that although Cohen made more than $4 million as a consultant, he provided “little or no real services.” The sentencing memorandum adds this kicker: Cohen “undertook similar acts of deception in his private life.” Khuzami summed it up this way: “Cohen’s consciousness of wrongdoing is fleeting … his remorse is minimal, and … his instinct to blame others is strong.” CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP And now we are about to see Cohen on national television, so millions of Americans can hear him attack the president of the United States. Cohen has zero credibility. Anything he says – under oath or in casual conversation – should be treated with extreme skepticism, at best. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE BY HANS VON SPAKOVSKY<doc-sep>
Even when he was getting ready to meet with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un in Hanoi, Vietnam, President Donald Trump found time to visit Twitter and attack his former personal attorney Michael Cohen. Trump accused the 52-year-old lawyer, who is testifying publicly before the House Oversight Committee in Washington, D.C. today, of lying in the hope of reducing his three-year prison sentence. Cohen is expected to report to federal prison on May 6, but how much time he will actually serve remains to be seen. Trump obviously knew that Cohen’s testimony would paint him in an extremely negative light: major media reported that Cohen would be testifying on the ways in which the president is a “racist” and a “con man.” And at roughly 1:08 eastern time, Trump tweeted, “Michael Cohen was one of many lawyers who represented me (unfortunately). He had other clients also. He was just disbarred by the State Supreme Court for lying & fraud. He did bad things unrelated to Trump. He is lying in order to reduce his prison time. Using Crooked’s lawyer!” In federal court, Cohen has pled guilty to a long list of criminal charges. On August 22, 2018, he pled guilty to eight charges, ranging from bank fraud and tax evasion to campaign finance violations. And in November, he also pled guilty to lying to Congress about plans to build a Trump Tower Moscow in Russia—a real estate project that was abandoned. After that guilty plea, different groups of federal prosecutors—Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team and the Southern District of New York—released separate sentencing memos on December 7. Mueller’s memo described Cohen as a cooperative witness and recommended a more lenient sentence, while Southern District prosecutors viewed him less favorably in their memo. And on December 12 in New York City, U.S. District Judge William H. Pauley III sentenced Cohen to three years in federal prison—which doesn’t necessarily mean that he will serve the entire sentence. There is no parole per se for civilians in the federal prison system in the United States, where parole boards exist at the state level (more than 50 altogether). But there is time off for good behavior—for example, cooperating with federal prosecutors. In Forbes Magazine, Walter Pavlo (who has written and lectured extensively about white collar crime) estimated that Cohen will probably end up spending about two years in prison. According to Pavlo, Cohen “will earn about 5.5 months in good time credit: additional days off of his sentence for obeying the rules in prison.” Pavlo added that “beyond that,” Cohen “can be placed at a halfway house and home confinement for a portion of his prison term. My guess is that he will get about four months halfway house/home detention. Total time served in prison will be about two years—a long time to be away from one’s family.” Writing in New York Magazine in December, Nick Tabor predicted that “if Cohen’s sentence does stick, he could wind up serving much less than three years” due to good-behavior credits as well as “an early release to spend his last several months at home, under supervision.” Tabor stressed that Cohen is a valuable witness for federal prosecutors, and valuable witnesses are less likely to serve their full sentences. One of the legal experts Tabor interviewed was David Kris, who was with the U.S. Justice Department under President Barack Obama. Kris told Tabor that in Mueller’s Russia investigation, Cohen is considered more helpful than Paul Manafort (Trump’s former campaign manager) but less helpful than Michael Flynn (who briefly served as national security advisor in the Trump Administration in 2017 and, like Manafort, is awaiting sentencing). Cohen could escape prison altogether if President Trump were to grant him a federal pardon. But Cohen has stressed that even if Trump offered him one, he wouldn’t accept it. And given Trump’s obvious contempt for his former employee, the chances of him offering Cohen a pardon are slim and none.