The leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee said Tuesday they have “re-engaged” former Trump attorney Michael Cohen over concerns that he misled lawmakers over whether he had advance knowledge of the infamous Trump Tower meeting amid their investigation into Russia interference in the 2016 campaign.
Recent reports, Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C., and vice chair Mark Warner, D-Va., told reporters on Capitol Hill, led them to re-approach Cohen about what he may have known ahead of the June 2016 meeting between Trump campaign officials and a Russian lawyer.
“Mr. Cohen had testified before the committee that he was not aware of any meeting prior to this disclosure in the press last summer,” Burr said, referring to Cohen’s testimony in October 2017. After reaching out to Cohen’s legal team, Burr said “they responded that he did stand by his testimony” in which he said he had no advance knowledge of the meeting.
Last month CNN reported Cohen was prepared to tell special counsel Robert Mueller that Trump knew in advance that son Donald Trump Jr. and campaign officials were planning to meet with Russians in hopes of obtaining dirt on Hillary Clinton, breaking with Trump’s claims he knew nothing about the June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower in Manhattan.
News of the meeting broke in the summer of 2017.
The senators acknowledged they were aware of reports on Cohen agreeing to a plead deal with federal prosecutors Tuesday amid an investigation into whether he violating tax or campaign finance laws.
Noting they had no “insight” into any agreements Cohen made with federal prosecutors in New York, Burr said: “We hope that today’s developments in Mr. Cohen’s plea agreement will not preclude him from an appearance before our committee as needed for [the] ongoing investigation.”
