March 1, 2019: I’m going to assume you did not have seven hours to invest in watching former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen testify before the House Oversight Committee. I’m retired. So, I watched till my eyes bugged out.
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In those
glory days, Cohen was lying for Trump.
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It was hard, while watching, not to imagine that Republicans on the panel were suffering from mass hysteria. They were boiling mad to learn that Cohen had lied to Congress in September 2017, even though they controlled both the House and Senate at the time and could have investigated more thoroughly if they had wished. Then again, in those glory days, Cohen was lying for Trump.
A few observations follow.
*
LET’S PICK UP the thread of testimony, allowing for a little literary license, with the first Republican speaking and/or yelling:
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH): ADMIT IT, MR. COHEN, YOU ARE A LIAR! DID ANYONE EVER TELL YOU THAT?
Cohen: Yes.
Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-WI.): Admit it! You are a COLOSSAL LIAR!
Cohen: I did lie.
Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-VA): Admit it! You lied to CONGRESS?
Cohen: I just admitted it.
At that point, Foxx “yielded back” her time (each
representative had five minutes) to Rep. Jordan, who started shouting again.
Rep. Jordan looked like he wanted to leap over the dais and throttle the
witness. You got the feeling he was the kind of guy who could strangle a puppy
without remorse.
I decided to pause my TV and look up what Cohen said back on September 19, 2017, testifying before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. That’s when he lied. In those days, Republicans, and the president himself, were thrilled with what Cohen said under oath.
Given my own proximity to the President
of the United States as a candidate, let me also say that I never saw anything
- not a hint of anything - that demonstrated his involvement in Russian
interference in our election or any form of Russian collusion.
I assume we will discuss the rejected
proposal to build a Trump property in Moscow that was terminated in January of
2016; which occurred before the Iowa caucus and months before the very first
primary. This was solely a real estate deal and nothing more. I was doing my
job. I would ask that the two-page statement about the Moscow proposal that I
sent to the Committee in August be incorporated into and attached to this
transcript.
I hit the pause again, to restart the hearings.
Jordan (still yelling at Cohen): YOU SNAKE! YOU ARE A
HUMONGOUS LIAR!!!
Me (thinking): Cohen knew in September 2017 about a secret
June 2016 meeting with Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort with
agents of the Russian Federation. That was the meeting all three “forgot.” Then
the truth came out because the “enemies of the people,” in the free press were
digging to find it. Then the president lied about the purpose of the meeting.
Next, Press Secretary Pinocchio lied and said her boss never lied about that
purpose. Later the president’s lawyer admitted, “Okay, he did lie.”
My reverie was interrupted by another shouting Republican, Rep. Bob Gibbs of Ohio. He called Cohen a liar.
The President of the United States had to know.
Me (still thinking): Cohen lied again when he claimed
negotiations to build a Trump property in Moscow ended in January 2016. Those
lies served to shield Mr. Trump. Surely, the next GOP lawmaker to speak is
going to realize…
Mark Meadows (R-NC): I hope you rot in jail for 5,000 years, Mr. Cohen. You are a liar. Have we not asked if you are?
Cohen: I lied. So did the presi…..
Meadows: SILENCE!!
Me: Cohen lied about payments to keep a porn star’s story out of the news.
Those lies also benefited Trump. Someone on the Republican side is sure to
bring this up.
Mark Green (R-TN): Liar, liar, pants on fire! Let the American people note: We have a poster to make the point!
(He gestures toward it.)
 |
Meadows, Jordan and Massie: inordinately proud of their poster. |
Me: If Cohen lied to Congress, the President of the United States had to
know! The president had a tongue that wagged and Twitter thumbs to tap out
correction. Even the greatest idiot ever elected to Congress should be able to
figure this out…
Thomas Massie (R-KY): I’m not going to ask you again, Mr. Cohen, you fraud, you faker, you falsifier? You LIED, DIDN’T YOU!
Cohen: Yes.
Massie (beaming): I knew it!!!!!
Me (thinking, as always): Maybe I should mute the TV when Jordan talks next and just watch facial expressions….
Jordan: -----
Me: I
never knew veins on a neck could stick out that far. Okay, next is this
Democratic guy; I’ll unmute the TV.
Rep. John Sarbanes (D-MD): I wonder……………if………Mr. Cohen…………
Me: This guy is phrasing his question so deliberately I don’t think he’s going to get it out before his five minutes are up.
I take a quick bathroom break. When I return Sarbanes is done but I have no idea what he said. Another Republican is shouting at Cohen.
Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ): You are a THUG, MR. COHEN. Also, has anyone mentioned that you are a cheat, a phony, and a swindler? If President Trump was a liar, a cheat and a racist, as you claim, why did you work for him for TEN YEARS!”
Gosar gets so fired up, because he thinks he has Cohen trapped, that he blathers on and when he tries to launch into a quotation that he says he loves, his five minutes are up. He’s left mumbling incomprehensibly into his microphone.
Me (pondering the obvious): If Cohen was a thug and a liar, why was
Trump happy to keep him around for a decade?
“Someone I always liked & respected.”
The hearings continued. I was amused when GOP lawmakers acted as if they couldn’t believe what a sleazebag Cohen had always been – what with cheating on his taxes, which Cohen also admitted he did. Fortunately, I had a vestige of memory and knew Cohen had been the deputy finance chairman of the Republican National Committee until June 2018. He lost his post only after it became clear he might turn on President Trump and, shall we say, start correcting his story.
I’m sure no one on the GOP side wanted viewers to recall that Elliott Broidy, another RNC deputy finance chair, had employed Cohen to arrange a secret hush money payment. In that case, Broidy had to fork over $1.6 million to shut up another Playboy Bunny – as opposed to the hush money payment Cohen helped arrange to shut up the other Playboy Bunny with whom Trump had had an affair.
So, yeah, Cohen, what a thug!
Or was it a “rat.” Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-MD) seemed interested in the fact that the President of the United States had labeled Cohen a “rat” on Twitter, after it became clear he would cooperate with prosecutors. This seemed odd, because until it became clear Cohen was going to turn, Trump had tweeted, calling Cohen a “good man” and someone “I always liked & respected.”
Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA) spoke next. Higgins, a bullet-headed gentleman, proved unique in that he was clearly baffled by the simplest facts. At one point, Cohen produced evidence, a signed check for $35,000, indicating President Trump was paying him as late as August 1, 2017, for his role in covering up the story of Stormy Daniels, the porn queen, in violation of campaign finance laws.
He said he had more evidence he could share.
Higgins (now chastising the witness): By thunderation, sir, where is this treasure trove of documents of which you speak? Why are you hiding evidence, good sir? Do you think we Republicans on this committee are fools?
Cohen: These documents are in a storage locker. They were seized last April in a raid on my office and home. They aren’t “hidden.” They were returned to me by investigators after they gathered the evidence they needed.
Higgins: What kind of monster would hide boxes of evidence, by God and all the 12 Commandments!!!
Cohen: Um…
There was, here and there during testimony, some good news for the president. Cohen said that he himself had never been to Prague. A potentially devastating allegation, included in the Steele dossier, was that Cohen flew there in the summer of 2016 to work out payments to Russian hackers so they could keep up their good work interfering in the election to help Trump win.
A Democratic member, whose name I missed, asked Mr. Cohen about other stories he might have helped “capture and kill” to protect Trump. Was there an elevator tape that might show him striking Mrs. Trump, as had been rumored? Cohen was adamant in stating that he did not believe the president would ever strike his wife. He also said that he did not believe a tape of hookers peeing on a Moscow hotel bed for the viewing pleasure of Donald J. Trump existed.
Trump must have wanted him to lie.
That was it for the good news. Cohen pointed out that his false testimony in September 2017 had been vetted by defense lawyers for Mr. Trump. He said he discussed his testimony with the president himself.
Me: So if that testimony was false…
Meadows: Why are we listening to THIS DECEIVER, THIS DISSEMBLER?
Me: Trump must have wanted him to lie…
Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY): “When was the last time you had contact with Mr. Trump in regard to possible testimony before Congress or cooperation with investigators?”
Cohen: I think…about June 2018. I cannot comment further because the matter is part of an ongoing investigation in the Southern District of New York. I am in constant contact with prosecutors.
Rep. Jordan gets five minutes “yielded back” by a GOP colleague and spends them calling Cohen a liar.
Eleanor Norton (D-DC): Mr. Cohen, are there other crimes involving Mr. Trump which this panel should know about?
Cohen: Yes. But I cannot comment further because
investigations are…
Rep. Meadows: Mr. Cohen, I would like you to look up here. Behind me, we have Lynn Patton, an actual African American woman! She has worked for Donald J. Trump for many years and now holds a government post. She says Trump is not a racist. How dare you say Mr. Trump is a racist now that we can show he has a black friend?”
(Ms. Patton stands there, not opening her mouth, looking like a hostage who might want to try blinking in Morse code.)
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI): The fact that my colleague would use an African American as a prop is, in itself, a racist ploy.
Meadows (looking like he might be suffering a stroke): How dare you call me a racist!!!
Tlaib: Mr. Cohen, do you believe the president and others have been trying to intimidate you, to convince you not to correct the record before Congress?
Cohen: I do. I worry. I never walk with my wife and
children in public anymore. I send them ahead. I’m afraid one of Trump’s 62
million Twitter followers might attack the people I love.
Finally, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has her turn to question the witness, and here, and in the Democratic questions above, we quote actual questioning and testimony verbatim. The young Democrat from New York goes straight to the point. She has learned, she says, that Trump often overvalued assets, golf courses and the like, if he wanted to win favorable loan treatment from large money-laundering, international banks. To avoid paying property taxes he would then order lawyers and accountants to undervalue the same properties. Was this an accurate assessment, she asked?
Cohen: Yes.
Ocasio-Cortez: Would anyone else know about such practices?
Cohen: Allen Weisselberg, Ron Lieberman and Matthew Calamari.
Rep. Ocasio-Cortez: A recent article in The New York Times notes that taxpayers spent $127 million to help build Trump Links, a Trump property in the Bronx, my district. But the deal allowed Mr. Trump to keep almost every dollar the golf club took in. Is it possible he undervalued Trump Links for tax purposes? On financial disclosure forms the president claimed that Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter, Florida was worth $50 million. Yet he reported to local tax authorities that the property was worth no more than $5 million [emphasis added].
Cohen: That is identical to what Mr. Trump did with Briarcliff Manor, another private golf club.
Ocasio-Cortez: Would it help for the committee to obtain federal and state tax returns from the president and his companies to address that discrepancy?
Cohen: I believe so.
That was when I decided to click off the TV and go pour myself a stiff drink.
POSTSCRIPT: The parents of Otto Warmbier react today to President Trump’s recent comments regarding Kim Jong-un. Donald says his pal Kim Jong-un must not have known about the brutal abuse of the young American prisoner. Otto’s parents, Fred and Cindy Warmbier, are having no part of Trump’s sucking up to a murderous dictator. “We have been respectful during this summit process,” they explain in a statement. “Now we must speak out. Kim and his evil regime are responsible for the death of our son Otto. Kim and his evil regime are responsible for unimaginable cruelty and inhumanity. No excuses or lavish praise can change that.”
You
almost expect Trump to lash out at Otto’s parents, but for once someone keeps
the president in check, and no Twitter attack results.
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