House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff vowed Sunday to look into the claims from BuzzFeed’s disputed story claiming Michael Cohen told special counsel Robert Mueller the president directed him to lie to Congress about business dealings in Russia.
“Congress has a fundamental interest in two things, first in getting to the bottom of why a witness came before us and lied and who else was knowledgeable that this was a lie,” the California Democrat told CBS News’ “Face the Nation.”
“But the other reason why we have to get to the bottom of this is Bill Barr testified last week that he would not commit to following the advice of ethics lawyers if they urged him to recuse himself and he would not commit to making the Mueller report public,” he said, referring to William Barr, President Trump’s attorney general nominee.
Schiff’s comments come after Mueller’s office pushed back Friday on an article by BuzzFeed which reported that Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney, told federal prosecutors the president ordered him to lie when be appeared before the House and Senate Intelligence committees in 2017 about Trump Organization negotiations to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. Discussions regarding the potential real estate deal lasted longer and closer to the 2016 election than Cohen told investigators.
Schiff on Sunday suggested that the rare statement from Mueller’s team contradicting BuzzFeed’s news story may indicate the special counsel wants to use Cohen “as a witness in further prosecutions and wanted to make sure that the public didn’t have a perception that he was saying more than he was saying at least to the special counsel.”
Schiff also said Sunday his panel had already given Cohen a date to provide testimony either voluntarily or under a subpoena.
Cohen is due to appear before the House Oversight Committee on Feb. 7 ahead of when he is required to report to federal prison in March. He was sentenced to two months behind bars in December after he pleaded guilty to “knowingly and willfully” making “a materially false, fictitious and fraudulent statement and representation” to Congress. Those two months will be served concurrently with the three years he received as part of the campaign finance violations and tax and bank fraud case he faced last year in New York.
