The top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee is demanding the panel hold a hearing with the former personal attorney for President Trump.
The demand by Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., to committee Chairman Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., comes after Michael Cohen pleaded guilty in federal court Tuesday in Manhattan to eight criminal counts.
In the process, he implicated the president when he admitted that “in coordination and at the direction of a candidate for federal office” he kept information that would have been detrimental to the then-Republican presidential nominee from going public during the 2016 election cycle.
[Opinion: Cohen’s plea could land Trump in the witness chair]
Cohen’s lawyer has since appeared on television, and said Tuesday night Cohen would “tell the truth” to “if asked by any authority” — including “any congressional committee.”
He would also appear without a grant of immunity, Lanny Davis said Wednesday morning.
“These are extremely serious crimes that implicate the fundamental underpinnings of our democracy, and they warrant robust and credible oversight by Congress as an independent constitutional check on the Executive Branch,” Cummings said in a Wednesday letter to Gowdy.
Due to the “gravity” of the Cohen revelations, Cummings asks Gowdy to schedule a hearing before the House Oversight Committee “as soon as possible.”
“I have no doubt you would convene immediate hearings on these matters if the occupant of the White House were a Democrat,” wrote Cummings. “I ask you to apply the same standard here.”
Trump has spent the time since the guilty plea attacking Cohen on Twitter.
Trump argued that Cohen wrongly pleaded guilty to violating campaign finance law because such violations “are not a crime.”
