The NPR Politics Podcast - Michael Cohen Testifies Against Trump In Public Hearing

Episode Date: February 28, 2019

The president's former lawyer, Michael Cohen, testified before the House oversight committee. Cohen provided members of Congress what he said were documents that backed up his testimony. This episode: Congressional correspondent Scott Detrow, White House correspondent Tamara Keith, justice correspondent Ryan Lucas, and national political correspondent Mara Liasson. Email the show at [e-mail]. Find and support your local public radio station at npr.org/stations.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey, this is Carla at my son's hockey practice just north of Seattle, Washington, where I'm enjoying some of the last sounds of the youth hockey season. This podcast was recorded at... I love this timestamp. It is 5.55 p.m. on Wednesday, February 27th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this. All right, here's the show. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast.

It was one of the most high-profile hearings in decades. President Trump's former attorney, Michael Cohen, testified before Congress. Cohen accused the president of wrongdoing, being a conman and a racist, among other things, as Cohen himself prepares for prison. I can only warn people, the more people that follow Mr. Trump, as I did blindly, are going to suffer the same consequences that I'm suffering. I'm Scott Tetra. I cover Congress. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Ryan Lucas. I cover the Justice Department. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent.

There's a lot to walk through, a lot of key moments to talk about, but let's start, as we often do in big newsy days like this, by just going around and talking about one big thing that really stuck out to us. Mara, why don't you go first? Well, what really stuck out to me was that the Democrats wanted to talk about Trump, and the Republicans wanted to keep their focus on Michael Cohen. So there were two very different agendas on display. The Republicans came in with a simple, focused goal to undermine Cohen's credibility. And what struck me was that was hard to do because he's already admitted that he lied, he's ashamed of it. And what they didn't do, they didn't even try to do, was to show that his testimony about the president was false.

Ryan, what about you? For me, there's one big question that was hanging over all of this. The grand question of them all, which is whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russians during the 2016 election. And Cohen said that he knows of no collusion. He knows of no evidence of collusion. He said he had his suspicions, but certainly plays to Trump's advantage. You know, what stood out to me is that Michael Cohen brought the receipts on a bunch of different items. There were other allegations where he didn't bring the receipts, but he did bring the receipts. And that does stand out. You know, a check with Donald Trump's signature on it may not be that legally

significant, but it is it's right there in big, bold Sharpie, especially a check that he signed while president of the United States. So there's a lot to get into. Let's let's walk through some of the key moments and talk about what we learned or didn't really learn. I think Cohen set the tone with his opening statement coming out, blasting President Trump for, as I said, being a liar, being a con man, but also being pretty blunt about the situation he finds himself in. 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 con man. And he is a cheat. We've seen Cohen, beginning with his elocution in court in the Southern District of New York when he was being sentenced, expressing remorse for what he's done, contrition, saying that he's trying to make amends. There was a lot of that today. This is perhaps also it can be deeply heartfelt, but there's also the this is part of a Michael Cohen rehabilitation tour. And we've seen that over the past couple months. And I think that today is part of that as well. I am not a perfect man. I have done things I am not proud of.

And I will live with the consequences of my actions for the rest of my life. The thing about Michael Cohen is he wants to be the sad family guy who's really screwed things up and was just making a big mistake and believed a con man and all of that. But Michael Cohen was an active participant in this enterprise, a very active, exuberant participant in this enterprise. And there was this exchange where Congresswoman Jackie Speier, Democrat from California, was trying to get at, how much have you threatened people on behalf of Donald Trump? How many times did Mr. Trump ask you to threaten an individual or entity on his behalf?

Quite a few times. 50 times? More. 100 times? More. 200 times? More. 100 times? More. 200 times? More. 500 times?

Probably. And that's a taste of the sort of pit bull that Michael Cohen was for Donald Trump. Yeah, and it is this remarkable thing that that person, that, you know, loyal person who fought for Trump and defended Trump and threatened people for Trump is now in this open hearing on national TV saying things about President Trump that seem to be designed for maximum embarrassment. So, Ryan, Cohen says he's ashamed. We know he's heading to prison. Can you just catch us up to speed on where exactly Cohen finds himself right now, why he's going to prison, when he's going to prison? You bet. So Cohen pleaded guilty

to a number of federal crimes, among them tax evasion, lying to a financial institution, lying to Congress, as well as two campaign finance violations that are tied to payments to women who alleged that they had affairs with Trump. Now, Cohen was sentenced in December. He's to report to federal prison for a three-year term on May 6th. Now, those payments haven't been the main focus of the Mueller investigation, obviously, which looks into the 2016 election and obstruction of justice allegations and whether or not the president tried to stop that investigation. But these payments have been something that we focused a lot on over the last year or so,

because among other things, in the court filings, the federal prosecutors have established that Michael Cohen directed these payments to women to cover up alleged affairs with Donald Trump and did so at the request of Donald Trump. At the direction of Donald Trump. And we got extra details today from Cohen about Trump's role in that. He put us in the room with Trump and the chief financial officer for the Trump organization, a man by the name of Allen Weisselberg, and the conversation that they had. When it was ultimately determined, and this was days before the election, that Mr. Trump was going to pay the $130,000. In the office with me was Alan Weisselberg,

the chief financial officer of the Trump organization. He acknowledged to Alan that he was going to pay the $130,000 and that Allen and I should go back to his office and figure out how to do it. And the end result was Cohen making this payment. And this is a payment that he is going to federal prison for. And, Tam, the White House has acknowledged the basic big picture premise here, right, that these payments were set up, that they did go to Michael Cohen for this reason, even though they've denied the underlying affairs. Right. Though they didn't acknowledge it initially. I mean, go back not too long ago and President Trump was denying that he knew anything about the payments, denying that there was any reason to make the payments. Now they're accepting that these payments were made and they just say it wasn't a campaign finance violation. The issue for Trump, whether he is in true legal peril about these payments, and the check doesn't really answer this, is his intent. Did the president

know that this would be a campaign finance violation? And or did the president assume that this was only related to his private life and was not a campaign issue at all? That's actually two separate questions. in the Southern District of New York, that those payments were about the election and making sure that the information, those alleged affairs was not public and therefore protecting the presidential campaign from bad press. Okay. So anything else in the whole bucket of payments that really jumped out to you, that leads to more questions that you feel like we learned? A couple of names came up again and again, David Pecker, Allen Weisselberg. Those are names that came up with questionable payments, questionable actions, people who could corroborate things that Cohen said. And we may see those people get subpoenaed or called in by Congress to come in and tell lawmakers what they know. So let's move on to

the big one, the question of whether or not the Trump campaign, high-ranking people in the Trump campaign, were in communication with, plotted with Russian operatives who were trying to influence the election. Michael Cohen said this about the question of whether Donald Trump knew the WikiLeaks leaks were happening. Mr. Trump put Mr. Stone on the speakerphone. 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, wouldn't that be great?

Would Bob Mueller have the records of a phone call like this? If there is a phone call like this, phone records are something that prosecutors can get access to. And that's an important reminder that some of this information that we're talking about right now before we get to the bigger political implications, this is new to us, but not necessarily new to the investigators because, you know, Michael Cohen, for instance, said today that he met with Robert Mueller's team seven times. Michael Cohen has held extensive talks with both prosecutors for the Southern District of New York and in particular with Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team. Yes, he has provided them with a lot of information. We know that Mueller actually, in his sentencing memo for Cohen, outlined some of the things that he had provided. There's a lot of stuff that, as you said, may be newer to us, nitty gritty details,

but those are all going to be things that prosecutors will already have known. And that gets to investigation. I called them buckets before, but since we're talking about 2016 election, I'll call them baskets. Baskets of investigation. Baskets. Number three, the question of obstruction of justice. There had been a bombshell report that Michael Cohen had information that President Trump directly told him to lie.

Obviously, that caused a big stir until Robert Mueller's office took the very rare step of saying, no, that story is not accurate. And today, Michael Cohen corroborated that. No, he said the president didn't directly direct him, but he did describe how he understood from the president that he was supposed to not tell Congress. And this was in an exchange with a Republican, Justin Amash. You suggested that the president sometimes communicates his wishes indirectly. For example, you said, quote, Mr. Trump did not directly tell me to lie to Congress. That's not how he operates, end quote. Can you explain how he does this? Sure. It would be no different if I said,

that's the nicest looking tie I've ever seen. Isn't it? What are you going to do? You're going to fight with him? The answer is no. So you say, yeah, it's the nicest looking tie I've ever seen. That's how he speaks. He doesn't give you questions. He doesn't give you orders. He speaks in a code. And I understand the code because I've been around him for a decade. I was confused about the tie anecdote. But Ryan, what did you make of this broader point? This gets to how Cohen says he understood that the line from Team Trump was going to be this was a witch hunt. There were no business dealings with Russia.

He talked about how this is what the president would say. He'd say it to Cohen, even though they might have just discussed the Trump Tower project. And Cohen understood that to mean, okay, the line here is we don't have any business dealings with Russia, and I need to hold that line. In conversations we had during the campaign, at the same time, I was actively negotiating in Russia for him, he would look me in the eye and tell me there's no Russian business and then go on to lie to the American people by saying the same thing. In his way, he was telling me to lie. One thing just overall that stood out to me from this hearing is that again and again, Michael Cohen put Trump in the room. Michael Cohen had Trump directing him, directing him to lie about things large and small, had Trump consulting him regularly about the Trump Tower project. This was really an effort to remove plausible deniability from Trump, to take away Trump's ability to say, oh, yeah, you know, my people handled these things. So we've been talking about all the stuff from this hearing that that's

interesting in terms of the world of the investigation. There's also the political world. Those two worlds are going to combine very soon, as soon as Robert Mueller's report comes out. We're going to take a quick break, come back and talk about the politics and what this means going forward. When's the last time you had a really good workout? Not of your biceps, but of your brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam, host of Hidden Brain. Listen every week and flex your mind. All right, we are back. Let's talk politics now. What do Republicans want to get out of this today? Oh, they wanted to get out of it today that Michael Cohen should not be believed.

He's a liar. He's a felon. He's going to jail. And that's what they focused on relentlessly all day. Liar, liar, pants on fire. No one should ever listen to you. You have a history of lying over and over and over again. You're a pathological liar. You don't know truth from falsehood. So we've established that you lie on your taxes,

you lie to banks, and you have been convicted of lying to Congress. It seems to me that there's not much that you won't lie about when you stand to gain from it. A pattern of deception for personal greed and ambition, and you just got 30 minutes of an opening statement where you trashed the President of the United States of America. You made an oath last time you were here and that oath meant nothing to you then. Everything's been made of your lies in the past. I'm concerned about your lies today. Two things here. First of all, one of the moments that really jumped out to me was when Cohen at one point responded to this line of questioning from Republicans. I just find it interesting, sir, that between yourself and your colleagues, that not one question so far since I'm here has been asked about President Trump.

That's actually why I thought I was coming today. Not to confess the mistakes that I've made. I've already done that and I'll do it again every time you ask me about taxes or mistakes, yes, I made my mistakes. I'll say it now again. And I'm going to pay the ultimate price. But I'm not here today. And the American people don't care about my taxes. They want to know what it is that I know about Mr. Trump.

And not one question so far has been asked about Mr. Trump. So second thing, on the last point that Cohen made, I wonder if Republicans regretted trashing him at every opportunity, because in fact, he said a lot of things today in various points that that bolstered President Trump and the White never in Prague, which is a story that's been floating around. Related to the dossier. Related to the dossier. The Christopher Steele dossier, that investigation that started his campaign opposition research that really kicked a lot of this off and Republicans have tried to discredit. One of the key findings in there was that at one point in 2016, Cohen flew to Prague and met with Russian operatives to coordinate all of this. A lot of stuff has been confirmed in the Steele dossier. That was a big one. He said under oath, I never went to Prague. He said that there was no elevator tape, which he said he searched for

and never found it. The elevator tape is supposedly a security tape in an elevator that shows Donald Trump hitting Melania. He said that doesn't exist as far as he knows. And what other conspiracy theory did he knock down? Oh, he said that even though a payment was made to a person who claimed that there was a love child, there was no actual love child. And he said that he knows of no evidence of collusion between Donald Trump and the Russians. Questions have been raised about whether I know of direct evidence that Mr. Trump or his campaign colluded with Russia. I do not.

And I want to be clear. But I have my suspicions. Which is notable given that he seemed to be showing up, as Tam said, to dump every single thing that he could on Donald Trump. So maybe Republicans will selectively walk back some of their larger charges given all of that. But let's talk about the Democrats. What was their goal today? I think their goal was to establish that the president broke the law in some ways. And whether it was campaign finance or tax fraud or not telling the truth on financial disclosures, I think the big

question remains whether or not they feel that the president's wrongdoing rises to an impeachment. And Chairman Cummings was asked about this after the hearings, and he echoed what Gerald Nadler, who's the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has said, which is even if the president committed something that Democrats consider to be high crimes and misdemeanors, does that mean we should impeach him? Even if the offenses are impeachable offenses, should we impeach him? Because impeachment is not just a political process, it's a political decision. And it has all sorts of repercussions potentially, especially because if you even if you could impeach Donald Trump in the House, you cannot remove him in the Senate because the Republicans are in the majority there. And there could be a backlash, as there was when Bill Clinton was impeached in the House and not convicted, slashed, removed by the Senate.

What Elijah Cummings also made clear is that this is not the end. This is the beginning. That Cohen's testimony is the start of an investigative process that this committee and other committees are undertaking and that there will be more to come. And several members were asking Cohen very specific questions about who else should we talk to? Where are the other leads? So Alan Weisselberg, whose name we heard many times, he's the guy who knows all the financial stuff about the Trump organization. You can expect that we're going to be hearing his name a lot more. And one thing that Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez got towards the end of the hearing is a question about insurance and whether Trump ever inflated his assets to insurance companies.

Cohen said he believes he did, and he directed, essentially put an X on the Trump organization, saying where you can find them and who you can talk to to get them. That's exactly the sort of thing that you're talking about. And that can lead to federal investigation as well. So last thing, President Trump is, of course, in Vietnam right now. As we tape, he's starting out his day, a very high stakes day. He's sitting down with Kim Jong-un. It's their second nuclear summit.

Tam, any sense how a president obsessed with how he's covered on TV news, especially a president obsessed with this investigation and how it's being perceived, how this affects him when he's sitting down with the leader of one of the countries that we have the most tense, hostile relationships with. I mean, you have the president of the United States going to do this big thing he wants to, you know, on the schedule, they have a signing ceremony later today. And this large issue, this domestic issue, as with almost every other trip the president has taken, is hanging over him back at home. And he is having a press conference at 350 in the morning Eastern time. And there's no way he doesn't get asked about it. So after that press conference, we will have a separate podcast analyzing any news that comes

out of that summit and also how the president is reacting to today's Cohen news, depending on what time you woke up and are listening to this podcast. It may already be in your feeds. If you're an early riser, check your feed soon. That is it for our conversation about Michael Cohen, though. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Ryan Lucas. I cover the Justice Department. And I'm Mara Liason, the White House. I'm Ryan Lucas. I cover the Justice Department. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.