President Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen arrived on Capitol Hill this week vowing to tell unflattering truths after pleading guilty last year to lying to Congress to protect the president.
Cohen lays out embarrassing and potentially criminal claims against Trump in prepared testimony released Wednesday before he appears before the House Oversight Committee.
“I have been smeared as ‘a rat’ by the president of the United States,” Trump’s decade-long “fixer” will complain.
Cohen, who begins a three-year prison sentence in May, is certain to be asked probing followups by Democrats on the House oversight panel.
The spectacle comes as Trump is in Vietnam for a second meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, but Trump fired off an early counterattack, saying on Twitter that Cohen is “lying in order to reduce his prison time.”
[Related: WATCH LIVE: Michael Cohen testifies before House Oversight Committee]
The following are seven major takeaways from a prepared copy of Cohen’s remarks:
Roger Stone allegedly told Trump he was speaking with Julian Assange
Cohen claims that Trump “knew that Roger Stone was talking with Julian Assange about a WikiLeaks drop of Democratic National Committee emails.”
Despite more than two years of federal inquiries, the degree of communication between Trump associates and the founder of WikiLeaks, who released hacked Hillary Clinton and Democratic Party emails, remains unclear.
In his testimony, Cohen will describe a July 2016 phone call from Stone, who over speaker phone told Trump “he had just gotten off the phone with Julian Assange” and that Assange told him that “within a couple days, there would be a massive dump of emails that would damage Hillary Clinton’s campaign.”
Trump allegedly responded, “wouldn’t that be great.”
Stone, currently facing charges including lying to investigators about his pursuit of hacked emails and witness tampering, has been gagged by a judge from discussing his case, but Assange has long pushed back on Stone’s insinuation of pre-release contacts, including in private.
In an October 2016 direct message on Twitter, the organization asked Stone to stop making “false claims” to have a backchannel to Assange.
Cohen has personal check from Trump for porn star payoff
According to his prepared remarks, Cohen will present lawmakers with a “copy of a check Mr. Trump wrote from his personal bank account — after he became president — to reimburse me for the hush money payments I made to cover up his affair with an adult film star and prevent damage to his campaign.”
Cohen paid porn star Stormy Daniels $130,000 in October 2016 in exchange for her signing a non-disclosure deal not to speak about an alleged 2006 tryst while Trump was married to first lady Melania Trump.
The former attorney will display a check from Trump for $35,000 dated Aug. 1, 2017. The check was one of 11 installments, he will say.
In August, Cohen pleaded guilty to a federal campaign finance violation in relation to the payment, and implicated Trump, saying he did so at the future president’s direction. Trump has argued that Cohen pleaded guilty to a non-crime after authorities unearthed unrelated bank and tax fraud, for which Cohen also pleaded guilty. Cohen in November pleaded guilty to a further count of lying to Congress.
Trump asked about Moscow project during campaign
Cohen will apologize to lawmakers for previously lying to them about Trump’s efforts to open a Trump Tower in Moscow, for which he has pleaded guilty.
Although Cohen will say that Trump did not direct him to lie, he also will say that Trump’s lawyers received his testimony and didn’t correct it, and that Trump deceived the public because he knew that talks continued well into 2016.
Cohen originally lied to lawmakers, saying talks to build a tower in Moscow ended in January 2016. He now says they continued months longer, and that Trump knew all along.
Talks about the project reportedly included discussion of giving Russian President Vladimir Putin a penthouse for free.
“There were at least a half-dozen times between the Iowa Caucus in January 2016 and the end of June when he would ask me ‘How’s it going in Russia?’ — referring to the Moscow Tower project,” Cohen says in prepared testimony.
“He lied about it because he never expected to win the election. He also lied about it because he stood to make hundreds of millions of dollars on the Moscow real estate project,” Cohen will say.
Trump has a history of racist remarks
Cohen offers three anecdotes that he argues show Trump is a “racist.”
“He once asked me if I could name a country run by a black person that wasn’t a ‘shithole.’ This was when Barack Obama was president of the United States,” Cohen says in his prepared remarks.
“While we were driving through a struggling neighborhood in Chicago, he commented that only black people could live that way,” he adds.
The third example offered by Cohen happened during the 2016 campaign, he says.
Trump “told me that black people would never vote for him because they were too stupid,” Cohen will say.
Cohen is handing over bank statements used to seek loan
Cohen also will provide lawmakers with financial statements from 2011-2013 from Deutsche Bank, according to prepared testimony.
The documents were used “to inquire about a loan to buy the Buffalo Bills” and were also sent to Forbes, the magazine that ranks wealthy people, Cohen will say.
Although Cohen does not directly allege Trump committed bank fraud by lying about his assets, he says, “It was my experience that Mr. Trump inflated his total assets when it served his purposes, such as trying to be listed among the wealthiest people in Forbes, and deflated his assets to reduce his real estate taxes.”
Trump didn’t want school grades released
The infamously aggressive former Trump surrogate will tell lawmakers that he personally warned Trump’s former schools against releasing his grades.
Cohen will offer the House oversight committee “copies of letters I wrote at Mr. Trump’s direction that threatened his high school, colleges, and the College Board not to release his grades or SAT scores.”
2016 campaign was ‘marketing opportunity’ for Trump
Cohen, once widely seen as Trump’s closest assistant, will contend that Trump never intended to be president, a claim that’s long been made by his detractors.
“He never expected to win the primary. He never expected to win the general election. The campaign — for him — was always a marketing opportunity,” Cohen will say.
