President Trump’s former longtime personal lawyer Michael Cohen on Thursday demanded an apology be issued to him and his family, insisting he had “nothing” to do with Russian collusion or meddling during the 2016 election.
“My family & I are owed an apology. After 2 years, 15 hours of testimony before House & Senate under oath & producing more than 1000 documents, dossier misreports 15 allegations about me,” he wrote on Twitter Thursday. “My entire statement must be quoted- I had nothing to do with Russian collusion or meddling!”
[Related: Prosecutors to gain access to more than 4M files obtained from Michael Cohen raid]
My family & I are owed an apology. After 2 years, 15 hours of testimony before House & Senate under oath & producing more than 1000 documents, dossier misreports 15 allegations about me. My entire statement must be quoted- I had nothing to do with Russian collusion or meddling!
— Michael Cohen (@MichaelCohen212) June 28, 2018
Cohen did not immediately respond to the Washington Examiner’s inquiry asking him to clarify his tweet.
Cohen’s scheduled appearance before the Senate Intelligence Committee in September was delayed after he released his opening statement to the press, blasting the mostly unverified Trump-Russia dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele that was published in full by BuzzFeed News.
“My name is mentioned more than a dozen times in the lie-filled-dossier and so within moments of BuzzFeed’s publication, false allegations about me were plastered all over the national and international press,” Cohen wrote at the time. “The accusations are entirely false.”
Cohen also denied the dossier’s claims via his legal representative Stephen Ryan in an eight-page letter to the House Intelligence Committee obtained by the New York Times in August.
Among the accusations in the dossier is an allegation that Cohen met with Konstantin Kosachev, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, during a trip to the Czech Republic in 2016 shortly after the U.S. imposed sanctions on 24 Russian oligarchs, including Kosachev.
Cohen has refuted the claim, stating he had “never been” to the capital Prague. But McClatchy reported in April that special counsel Robert Mueller had evidence to the contrary. Days later, Cohen dropped a pair of libel lawsuits against BuzzFeed and private investigation firm Fusion GPS, arguing they had defamed him by publishing the dossier.
Cohen abandoned the suits after his office, home and hotel room were raided by the FBI as part of a criminal probe into his conduct as Trump’s “fix-it” man launched by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York based on a referral from Mueller.
By ending the suits, Cohen possibly avoided being questioned by legal counsel from Fusion GPS or being compelled to turn over materials related to the case, which could weaken his defense in the other matter.
Cohen has not been charged with a crime, but New York prosecutors are probing whether he committed bank and wire fraud or broke campaign finance laws.
