PARDON POWER

Cohen lawyer says Trump advisers were ‘dangling’ possibility

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

President Donald Trump’s advisers dangled the possibility of a pardon for his former personal lawyer Michael Cohen last year, Cohen’s attorney said Thursday, as congressional investigators zero in on the president’s pardon power.

The issue of pardons has emerged as a key line of inquiry as Democrats launch a series of sweeping investigations into Trump’s political and personal dealings.

Lanny Davis, Cohen’s lawyer, said in a written statement Thursday that his client was “open to the ongoing ‘dangling’ of a possible pardon by Trump representatives privately and in the media” in the months after the FBI raided Cohen’s home, office and hotel room in April 2018.

Davis, who was not Cohen’s lawyer at the time, said Cohen “directed his attorney” to explore a possible pardon with Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani and others on Trump’s legal team. The statement appears to contradict Cohen’s sworn testimony last week at a House Oversight Committee hearing that he had never asked for, and would not accept, a pardon from Trump.

Davis’ comment raises questions about whether Cohen – who is slated to begin a three-year prison sentence in May for crimes including lying to Congress – lied to Congress again last week.

Cohen’s legal team argued that his statement was correct because Cohen never asked the president himself for a pardon.

“This is more proof that Cohen is a liar,” Giuliani said in an interview Thursday. “The guy says he never asked Trump for a pardon. He’s hiding behind having his lawyers do it.”

There is nothing inherently improper about a subject in a criminal investigation seeking a pardon from a president given the president’s wide latitude in granting them.

But investigators want to know if the prospects of presidential pardons were somehow offered or used inappropriately.

It is hard to untangle the conflicting narratives given the unreliability of some of the central characters. Cohen, for instance, has pleaded guilty to lying to Congress and saw his credibility attacked last week by Republican lawmakers.

Davis has had to walk back at least one bombshell assertion over the last year – that his client could tell investigators that Trump had advance knowledge of a Trump Tower meeting with a Russian lawyer during the 2016 campaign – and Giuliani has fumbled facts and repeatedly moved the goalposts about what sort of behavior by the president would constitute collusion or a crime.