The 16 most consequential lines from Michael Cohen’s testimony

27 FEB 19 10:26 ET

Analysis by Chris Cillizza, CNN Editor-at-large

(CNN) — Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s one-time personal attorney and fixer, is testifying before the House Oversight Committee Wednesday — likely the only chance the public will have to hear from him before he is sent to jail in May for a series of tax and campaign finance charges.

Cohen’s testimony is one of the biggest moments of Trump’s time in office and among the most high-profile hearings on Capitol Hill in modern political memory.

I’ll be watching Cohen’s testimony throughout the day, plucking out key lines from him and adding context and analysis.

Let’s do this!

1. “I am ashamed because I know what Mr. Trump is. He is a racist. He is a conman. He is a cheat.”

These lines, from Cohen’s opening statement, set the tone for the day. And the tone is this: Cohen is not going to be pulling any punches on Trump. A man who spent a decade at the right hand of the current President of the United States is now saying on the record that that man is a “racist,” a “conman” and a “cheat.” We’ve grown used to the abnormal in Trump’s White House, but even by that standard, this is a “whoa” moment.

2. “He was a presidential candidate who knew that Roger Stone was talking with Julian Assange about a WikiLeaks drop of Democratic National Committee emails.”

And boom goes the dynamite. This is a Very Big Deal. Remember that Trump told The New York Times earlier this year that he had never spoken to Stone — who has been indicted on charges that he lied to Congress about the nature and extent of his dealing with WikiLeaks — about the DNC emails hacked by the Russians and then released to do maximum damage to Hillary Clinton’s campaign. “No, I didn’t. I never did,” Trump said when asked whether he talked to Stone about the stolen emails. The Times also pressed on whether Trump told anyone, including Stone, to get in touch with WikiLeaks to see when they were planning to drop the emails. “Never did,” Trump responded.

3. “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 has the receipts — literally! The check — for $35,000 — is dated August 1, 2017, and signed in Trump’s very distinctive script. That date is, obviously, after Trump became president. And if Cohen is to be believed, it also directly contradicts Trump’s assertions in April 2018 that he knew nothing about where Cohen got the money to keep porn star Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal — both of whom alleged affairs with Trump — quiet during the 2016 campaign.

Of course, a check signed to Cohen is not proof that the money was a reimbursement for the hush payments — although the check is consistent with Cohen’s version of events and the version of events that prosecutors in the Southern District of New York seem to believe: That Trump played a role in coordinating and orchestrating the payments to Daniels and McDougal in a clear end-run of campaign finance laws.

4. “Mr. Trump did not directly tell me to lie to Congress. That’s not how he operates.”

This from Cohen directly disputes reporting from BuzzFeed News that Cohen was instructed to lie by the President. Special counsel Robert Mueller’s office released a statement that took issue with the BuzzFeed reporting shortly after it published.

5. “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.”

This sheds light on the breadth of Trump’s interest in and conversations about Trump Tower Moscow. What we knew prior to today is that Cohen lied to Congress when he told them that all conversations with the Russians about the development had stopped by January 2016. Cohen later admitted that he had lied about that because he was concerned it might hurt Trump’s presidential chances if people knew that the conversations had continued all the way into the summer of 2016.

6. “Trump knew of and directed the Trump Moscow negotiations throughout the campaign and lied about it. 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.”

A few things here are relevant. First, Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani said in January that Trump was involved in discussions about the possible Trump Tower Moscow project all the way through the election. (Giuliani later said he was speaking only hypothetically about what Trump knew when.) Second, both that admission from Giuliani and Cohen’s claim seem to directly dispute Trump’s repeated insistence during the campaign that “I have nothing to do with Russia. I don’t have any jobs in Russia. I’m all over the world but we’re not involved in Russia.”

7. “Mr. Trump would often say, this campaign was going to be the ‘greatest infomercial in political history.’”

No matter how Trump tries to rewrite history, it is a fact that he never, ever thought he would be the Republican nominee — much less the president. He had walked up to the edge of running a few times before and knew that if he didn’t do it this time then people wouldn’t cover him when he thought about it in the future. You can dispute Cohen’s assertion that Trump’s entire campaign was solely to further brand awareness, but you cannot dispute that the billionaire businessman never thought he would win.

8. “Mr. Stone told Mr. Trump that he had just gotten off the phone with Julian Assange and that Mr. Assange told Mr. Stone that, within a couple of days, there would be a massive dump of emails that would damage Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Mr. Trump responded by stating to the effect of ‘wouldn’t that be great.’”

These lines are probably the most important in all of Cohen’s opening statement — and maybe in his broader daylong testimony. Per No. 2 above, Cohen’s assertion that he was in the room when Trump talked to Stone about WikiLeaks and its plans to release stolen emails runs directly counter to Trump’s public insistence that he had never talked to Stone about WikiLeaks. Directly counter. The timing of all of this is very interesting too. Cohen says in his testimony that the call occurred between Stone and Trump about WikiLeaks in July 2016. Later that month, Trump held a news conference in which he said: “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing, I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.” Either on or right around that day, according to an indictment of a number of Russian officials by Mueller, Russia sent phishing attempts to Clinton staffers. Ahem.

9. “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.”

Impossible to corroborate what Cohen is saying here — unless there were other people in the room — but this is consistent with reporting from CNN and others in January 2018 that Trump referred to immigrants coming into the US from “shithole” countries.

10. “He told me that black people would never vote for him because they were too stupid.”

Again, virtually impossible to corroborate this. While Trump never said anything like what Cohen alleges in the 2016 campaign, his pitch to black voters was hugely stereotypical — suggesting that they didn’t have much, so why not take a chance on voting for him.
“What do you have to lose by trying something new, like Trump,” Trump would often ask. “What the hell do you have to lose?”

11. “He asked me to pay off an adult film star with whom he had an affair, and to lie to his wife about it, which I did.”

This runs directly counter to Trump’s insistence that he a) knew nothing about the payment to Stormy Daniels and b) never spoke with Cohen about how to handle that situation. It is also runs counter to Trump’s repeated denials that he ever engaged in extramarital acts with Daniels.

12. “This $35,000 check was one of 11 check installments that was paid throughout the year — while he was President. The President of the United States thus wrote a personal check for the payment of hush money as part of a criminal scheme to violate campaign finance laws.”

The check Cohen is referencing — from No. 3 above — could be damning evidence. The problem, of course, is that nowhere on the check does it say that Trump is reimbursing Cohen for the $130,000 hush money payment to Daniels. Which gives Trump plausible deniability. Still, it doesn’t look good. At all.

13. “I’m talking about a man who declares himself brilliant but directed me to threaten his high school, his colleges, and the College Board to never release his grades or SAT scores.”

If you don’t think Cohen is telling the truth here, then you have missed the entirety of Trump’s professional and political life — all of which make Cohen’s claim wholly credible.

14. “He finished the conversation with the following comment. ‘You think I’m stupid, I wasn’t going to Vietnam.’”

Trump received a series of deferments that kept him out of the Vietnam war. He claimed he had a medical condition — bone spurs — that would make him unable to serve. Two daughters of the podiatrist who diagnosed Trump with those bone spurs told The New York Times that their father did so as a “favor” to Trump’s father, Fred.

15. “Questions have been raised about whether I know of direct evidence that Mr. Trump or his campaign colluded with Russia. I do not.”

NO COLLUSION!

16. “Don Jr. came into the room and walked behind his father’s desk — which in itself was unusual. People didn’t just walk behind Mr. Trump’s desk to talk to him. I recalled Don Jr. leaning over to his father and speaking in a low voice, which I could clearly hear, and saying: ‘The meeting is all set.’ I remember Mr. Trump saying, ‘OK good…let me know.’”

This conversation, which Cohen said happened in early June 2016, is what he believes is a sign that President Trump knew about the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting between Don Jr, Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort and a group of Russians promising dirt on Clinton. Trump and Trump Jr. have denied that the President ever knew about the meeting. And in their defense, Cohen’s memory is pure conjecture here; Don Jr. could have been talking about any number of meetings and Cohen has no proof that the President’s eldest son was actually looping his father in on the meeting with the Russians.