Rep. Darrell Issa alleged in a Saturday interview that “nobody’s going to be surprised” if President Trump allowed the 2016 June Trump Tower meeting to go ahead.
The remarks by the California Republican came during an interview with Fox News’ Neil Cavuto on what scrutiny and legal trouble the president could be in if he knew about the meeting Donald Trump Jr. had where he was told he could get dirt on Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
“But what if he’s proven to be a liar, congressman?” Cavuto asked.
“If he’s proven to have not told the whole truth about the fact that campaigns look for dirt, and if someone offers it, you listen to them, nobody’s going to be surprised,” Issa said. “There are some things in politics that you just take for granted.”
“You don’t think this has any long-term impact?” Cavuto asked. “He wouldn’t be the first politician, or president for that matter, to maybe just misrepresent things?”
Issa replied: “Businessmen listen to almost everyone who might be helpful, and by the way, they make pragmatic decisions about how to make bad stories go away.”
[Anthony Scaramucci: Possible Trump knew about Trump Tower meeting ‘after the fact’]
The attorney for Michael Cohen, the longtime lawyer and fixer for the president, provided a tape to CNN of a conversation between Cohen and Trump. In the conversation they discuss payments to Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model who alleges she had an affair with Trump in 2006.
CNN also reported this week that Cohen claims to have known about the 2016 Trump Tower meeting between Trump’s son and Natalia Veselnitskaya, a lawyer connected to Russian president Vladimir Putin.
That meeting has become part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference and possible connections with the Trump campaign during the election.
Issa trashed Cohen, calling him a “turncoat.”
“A turncoat lawyer, a lawyer who deserves to be disbarred for a number of his actions including recording his client clandestinely, makes a much better story than ‘Businessman Makes America Great Again,’” Issa said Saturday.
Trump tweeted on Friday that he did not know about the Trump Tower meeting, and said Cohen was just making the claims out of the pressure he is facing by federal prosecutors in New York.
