COHEN TESTIMONY | Trump knew about WikiLeaks email dump beforehand
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump's former personal lawyer is planning to tell a House committee that Trump knew ahead of time that WikiLeaks had emails damaging to Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign and that Trump is a "racist," a "conman" and a "cheat."
Michael Cohen suggests in prepared testimony obtained by The Associated Press that Trump also implicitly told him to lie about a Moscow real estate project. Cohen has pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about the project, which he says Trump knew about as Cohen was negotiating with Russia during the 2016 election campaign.
The hearing today is expected to provide the most damning depiction to date of Trump's campaign and business operations from a onetime member of the president's inner circle. It is the latest step in Cohen's evolution from legal fixer for the president – he once boasted that he'd "take a bullet" for Trump – to a foe who has implicated him in federal campaign finance violations.
Cohen's claims that Trump had advance knowledge of the emails contradict the president's assertions that he was in the dark, but it was not clear what evidence Cohen had to support the allegation or even how legally problematic it would be for Trump. Special counsel Robert Mueller has not suggested that mere awareness of WikiLeaks' plans, as Trump confidant Roger Stone is purported to have had, is by itself a crime.
Cohen says Trump did not directly tell him to lie, but "he would look me in the eye and tell me there's no business in Russia and then go out and lie to the American people by saying the same thing."