President Trump’s longtime attorney Michael Cohen said he has been the victim of vicious attacks on social media and is forced to walk separately from his family in public due to threats arising from comments about him by President Trump.
“I don’t walk with my wife if we go to a restaurant or we go somewhere. I don’t walk with my children,” Cohen told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Wednesday. “I make them go before me because I have fear.”
Cohen served as the president’s attorney and “fixer” for years and is expected to shed light on the extent of the president’s knowledge about a variety of issues, including hush-money payments made to two women with whom Trump allegedly had extramarital affairs and a possible deal to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.
Cohen pleaded guilty last year to lying to Congress, tax evasion, and campaign finance violations. Though Cohen at one point said he would take a bullet for Trump, he has since earned the president’s ire.
Trump has called Cohen a “rat” and on Wednesday tweeted that he was “lying in order to reduce his prison time.”
Cohen told lawmakers that as Trump has targeted him, he has received messages on social media that have since been passed along to federal authorities.
“I received some — and I’m sure you’ll understand — I received some tweets, I received some Facebook messenger, all sorts of social media attacks upon me, whether it’s the private direct message, that I’ve had to turn over to Secret Service because they are the most vile, disgusting statements that anyone can ever receive,” Cohen said. “And when it starts to affect your children, that’s when it really affects you.”
Cohen had to delay congressional testimony in January due to “ongoing threats” of an undefined nature to his family by the president and his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, Cohen’s attorney said at the time.
In a tweet last month, Trump again claimed Cohen was “lying to reduce his jail time” and said to “watch” his father-in-law, Fima Shusterman. Giuliani has also accused Cohen’s father-in-law of having ties to organized crime.
Cohen told lawmakers he believes the president’s attacks against his father-in-law are designed to inflict harm on him.
“Never in my life did I think Mr. Trump would do something so disgraceful, and he’s attacking him because he knows I care about my family, and to hurt me, he’s trying to hurt them,” Cohen said.
