Michael Cohen, US President Donald Trump´s former lawyer, told the House of Representatives that the president knew that one of his collaborators was in touch with WikiLeaks for the publication of thousands of Democratic Party emails that affected Hillary Clinton´s campaign.
Former Donald Trump´s attorney read a prepared opening statement to the commission where he branded Trump as “a racist”, “a conman” and “a cheat”.
“He was a presidential candidate who knew that Roger Stone was talking with Julian Assange about a WikiLeaks drop of Democratic National Committee emails.” Cohen told the Committee on Oversight and Reform.
Hours before, the Head of the White House reacted immediately through Twitter where he specified that the testimony of Cohen before the House of Representatives will be a lie and that it is not true that he was aware of the links of his election campaign with the WikiLeaks organization and its founder, Julian Assange.
“Michael Cohen was one of many lawyers who represented me (unfortunately). He had other clients also”. Trump wrote on Twitter from Hanoi, where he is attending his second meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un.
“He is lying in order to reduce his prison time,” said the president, who said that Cohen has just been “disbarred” as a lawyer in New York and added that “he did bad things unrelated to Trump.”
Cohen, who will be imprisoned in May to serve the three-year sentence he received in December for his role during the 2016 election campaign, testified today at the Committee on Oversight and Reform in the only public appearance of the three that he will have this week at the US Congress.
According to his prepared testimony, previously broadcast by US media, Cohen called Trump “a racist”, “a conman” and “a cheat”.
The former lawyer declared that Trump knew that his collaborator Roger Stone, also prosecuted, was in contact with Wikileaks for the publication of the Democrat Party hacked mails during the 2016 campaign.
“Days before the Democratic convention, I was in Mr. Trump´s office when his secretary announced that Roger Stone was on the phone. Mr Trump put Mr. Stone on the speakerphone. Stone told Trump he had just gotten off the phone with Julian Asange”, said Cohen.
In that conversation, Assange told Stone that in a couple of days he would filter emails “that would damage Hillary Clinton campaign”, to which Trump would have responded “wouldn´t that be great?”
Cohen also admitted that in the past he lied to Congress about Trump’s business in Russia.
“In conversations we had during the campaign, at the same time I was actively negotiating in Russia for him, 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. In his way, he was telling me to lie.”
Donald Trump´s former personal lawyer has also defined him as a “racist” person who, in private, is much worse.
He revealed that once, in a Chicago humble neighborhood Trump allegedly had said that only blacks could live that way.
“He once asked me if I could name a country run by a black person that wasn´t a ‘shit hole’,” said Cohen, who also revealed that once, in a humble neighborhood of Chicago, Trump allegedly said that “only blacks could live that way.”
Translated by: Jose Espinoza
Latinx Newswire
