President Trump said Thursday he hadn’t seen much of his former attorney’s testimony in front of Congress, but that Michael Cohen had “lied a lot.”
“I think having a fake hearing like that and having it in the middle of this very important summit is really a terrible thing,” the president said.
Trump commented on Cohen’s Wednesday testimony before the House Oversight Committee during a press conference Thursday in Hanoi, Vietnam, where he was for the second bilateral summit between the United States and North Korea.
“He lied a lot, but it was very interesting because he didn’t lie about one thing, said no collusion with the Russian hoax. And I said, ‘I wonder why he didn’t just lie about that, too?’ like everything else, he lies about so many different things,” Trump said.
Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney and fixer who has pleaded guilty to lying to Congress and campaign finance violations related to hush money payments to two women who alleged affairs with Trump, said in his opening statement to the panel that he has no evidence that Trump colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election.
“Questions have been raised about whether I know of direct evidence that Mr. Trump or his campaign colluded with Russia,” Cohen said, according to his prepared remarks. “I do not. I want to be clear.”
Cohen’s appearance in front of the panel, which grilled him on topics ranging from the 2016 election to his cooperation with investigators, was his first public testimony. He testified behind closed doors Tuesday to the Senate Intelligence Committee and is set to do the same Thursday to the House Intelligence Committee.
[Byron York: For GOP, attacking Michael Cohen’s credibility is a double-edged sword]
