Washington, February 27
President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer told Congress on Wednesday that Trump knew ahead of time that WikiLeaks had emails damaging to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, and he testified that Trump is a “racist,” a “conman” and a “cheat”.
Michael Cohen suggested 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 was 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 arrived in the hearing room just before the session was to start. An earlier restriction that the hearing was not to delve into Russia would not be followed, said House Reform and Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings of Maryland.
Trump lashed out at Cohen on Twitter, saying that his lawyer “did bad things unrelated to Trump” and “is lying in order to reduce his prison time”. — AP
House strikes down border emergency
The US House of Representatives dealt a blow to President Donald Trump on Tuesday, approving a resolution blocking him from obtaining funding for a Mexican border wall through his declaration of a national emergency. Dismissing a veto threat by the president, the Democratic-controlled House struck down Trump’s emergency declaration by a comfortable margin of 245-182, sending the measure to the Republican-held Senate. Thirteen Republicans joined Democrats in voting to “terminate” Trump’s emergency declaration. AFP
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