Day 769: Cohen offers damning testimony against Trump

As Republicans were content to carry water for Donald Trump, Democrats pounced on their opportunity to question Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, in a hearing before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday.

Cohen’s opening statement set the tone for what would be a tell-all of the previous decade.

I am ashamed that I chose to take part in concealing Mr. Trump’s illicit acts rather than listening to my own conscience.

I am ashamed because I know what Mr. Trump is.

He is a racist.

He is a conman.

He is a cheat.

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

Cohen is set to begin a prison sentence in May after pleading guilty to a number of crimes, and that’s really all the GOP House members brought up when they had a chance to ask Cohen questions. Republicans rarely challenged Cohen’s account of issues or surrounding facts.

(One particularly bizarre point occurred early in the hearing when Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) had a black woman stand behind him, as if she were some type of prop. Meadows indicated the woman worked for Trump and noted that she didn’t hear Trump say anything racist. Ipso facto, Trump couldn’t possibly be racist, Meadows concluded.)

However, when allowed to delve into substantive testimony — almost entirely elicited by Democrats — Cohen alleged multiple actions by Trump that are felonies.

The nation has become somewhat conditioned to “oh, Trump did more bad things.” But this is his former lawyer and fixer claiming Trump was an active part of multiple criminal conspiracies.

And he didn’t stop at just the elder Trump, either.

Cohen brought documents, including a copy of a check signed by Trump, to bolster his claims about Trump’s knowledge of hush money paid to one of Trump’s mistresses.

He brought others that he said were proof of more felonies committed by Trump. Trump is uniquely driven by money and ego, always looking out for his own bottom line.

He provided several documents to the committee. He offered what he said were financial statements that Mr. Trump gave to institutions such as Deutsche Bank and said the president inflated or deflated his assets when it served his purposes. He also offered letters he wrote at Mr. Trump’s direction to the president’s high school, colleges and the College Board threatening them not to release his grades during the 2016 campaign.

Mr. Cohen said Mr. Trump did not run for president to make the country great, calling it the “greatest infomercial in political history” for his business. “He never expected to win the primary,” he said. “He never expected to win the general election. The campaign, for him, was always a marketing opportunity.”

The only questions Cohen declined to answer pertained to on-going investigations by the Southern District of New York, though he did confirm that there were active probes against Trump.

When the dust settled, two things were abundantly clear:

• The known criminality of Donald Trump (and his family) may be just the tip of the iceberg. If even 10 percent of Cohen’s allegations were true, any other president would have impeachment proceedings brought against him immediately.
• The Trump Organization and its officers face potential significant civil and criminal exposure.

Cohen was able to espouse a number of novel details about both points. That should scare Trump and his lieutenants tremendously.

769 days in, 693 to go

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