Today, Explained - Michael Cohen LIVE

Episode Date: February 27, 2019

After weeks of delays and drama, President Trump’s former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, testified before Congress today. Vox’s Andrew Prokop says his statements amount to much more than blockbuster political theater. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Now I want to welcome Mr. Cohen and thank him for participating in today's hearing. Mr. Cohen, if you would please rise and I will begin to swear you in. So this is probably the biggest hearing yet from the new House Democratic committee majorities. It's been in the works for weeks. And there have even been claims that President Trump was trying to stop Cohen from appearing at this hearing by making threats against his family on Twitter. And thank you. And you may be seated. The microphones are sensitive. So Andrew Prokop, Vox, how did this event that's been in the works for weeks and, you know, there's been all sorts of drama leading up to it. How did it get started today? As all committee hearings do, the opening statements kicked off and set a partisan tone from the get-go.

Democrats did chide Cohen for lying to Congress in the past as he has admitted doing and pleaded guilty to. While Republicans tried to attack his credibility and claim that nothing that he was saying about President Trump, the Trump business, potential Russian interference with the election could be trusted. Mr. Chairman, here we go. Here we go. Your first big hearing, your first announced witness, Michael Cohen. I want everyone in this room to think about this. The first announced witness for the 116th Congress is a guy who is going to prison in two months for lying to Congress. And then we get to Michael Cohen's statements. What does he say?

So Cohen made an explosive set of allegations. Just to go through them really quickly, Cohen said that Trump encouraged him to lie about the Trump Tower Moscow project. He said that Trump was secretly talking with Roger Stone about WikiLeaks' plans to release Democrats' emails during the presidential campaign. He said that Trump made various racist comments. 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. And while we were once driving through a struggling neighborhood in Chicago, he commented that only black people could live that way.

He claimed that Trump inflated and deflated his assets for various reasons, inflated his assets to get a higher ranking on Forbes' The Richest People in the Country list, deflated them to avoid property taxes. He claimed that at a charity auction, Trump got him to bid up the price of a portrait of Donald Trump to make sure that it was the most expensive item at the auction. He laid out more details of Trump's alleged involvements in encouraging to pay off women like Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, who had alleged affairs with Trump during the campaign. He alleged that Trump was misleading the public about why he didn't serve in the military during the Vietnam War.

He said that Trump enlisted him to threaten his past schools so that they wouldn't release his grades. And he alleged that maybe Trump knew about Donald Trump Jr.'s famous meeting with a Russian lawyer during the campaign to discuss dirt on Hillary Clinton. And regarding the Mueller investigation, Cohen did say that 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. Some of that sounds familiar and some of that sounds new. I, for example, didn't know about the SAT scores. Was anything important revealed today?

I think there are a few important things. The biggest bombshell that stood out immediately is Cohen's claim that during the campaign, he overheard Donald Trump talking on the phone, on speakerphone, to Roger Stone, and that Stone told him that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was planning to release Democrats' emails in the coming days. And this is a pretty big allegation because in the whole Russia investigation that has happened so far, Robert Mueller has charged various Russian intelligence officers for stealing these Democratic emails. But he has not really told the full story about who in Trump's orbit might have known about this operation or have been involved in it. So this is our first concrete allegation that Trump did have an inside tip, at the very least, that WikiLeaks had something coming and that this tip came from Roger Stone. Cohen had a lot of time to ready himself for this testimony today.

How did he present himself during his opening statement? So Cohen has been using all this to at least project the image that he's turning over a new leaf, that he now sees clearly what a terrible person Donald Trump is and how terrible working for him was. And that in the past, he did lie and intimidate people to try to protect Trump. But now he's saying he's seen the light essentially and facing a prison sentence soon of three years. And he's saying that now all he wants to do is to tell the truth. For those who question my motives for being here today, I understand. I have lied, but I am not a liar. And I have done bad things, but I am not a bad man. I have fixed things, but I am no longer your fixer, Mr. Trump. After his statement, there's questions from Democrats and republicans how did that play out

very early on it became clear that the two sides had dueling partisan frames for the hearing democrats did chide cohen for his past lies to congress which he has admitted uh initially but they pressed him for information what he he knew about President Trump, Trump's family, Russian interference with the campaign, hush money payments, and all other sorts of matters. So they were trying to surface information about Trump world that was potentially scandalous. Republicans, on the other hand, took the tack of just trying to attack Cohen's credibility and discredit him, say that he had lied in the past so he should not be trusted again. And they went after him on all sorts of fronts.

Mr. Chairman, we said we were in search of the truth. I don't believe that Michael Cohen is capable of telling the truth. So let's go back at this credibility. You want us to make sure that we think of you as a real philanthropic icon, that you're about justice, that you're the person that somebody would call at 3 o'clock in the morning. No, they wouldn't. Not at all. His remorse is nonexistent. He just debated a member of Congress saying,

I really didn't do anything wrong with the false bank things that I'm guilty of and going to prison for. Mr. Jordan, that's not what I said. And you know that that's not what I said. I said I pled guilty and I take responsibility for my actions. I guess what I'm saying is I've talked to the president over 300 times. I've not heard

one time a racist comment out of his mouth in private. So how do you reconcile it? Do you have proof of those conversations? I would ask you to ask me. Do you have tape recordings of those conversations? No, sir. Well, you've taped everybody else. Why wouldn't you have a tape? That's also not true, sir. That's not true. Cohen comes out saying, yes, I have lied, but I am here to tell the truth as a citizen, as an example to my children. I am going to prison.

I don't want to be pardoned. I am here to fulfill my obligation to this body. And then for the next hours, he is called a liar. How did he handle himself through all of that? Cohen was a little sassy. At one point, Congressman Paul Gosar called him a path a liar. How did he handle himself through all of that? Cohen was a little sassy. At one point, Congressman Paul Gosar called him a pathological liar. You don't know truth from falsehood. Sir, I'm sorry. Are you referring to me or the president? Hey, this is my time. Are you referring to me, sir, or the president? When I ask you a question, I'll ask for an answer.

Sure. He said, shame on you to Jim Jordan at one point. And yeah, he stood up for himself really, often attempting to portray the Republican attacks as partisan or purely motivated to protect Trump. And at one point, Cohen pointed out that no one on the Republican side had yet asked him any questions about Trump. All they were doing was asking him about himself or trying to smear him. In the days leading up to this, I kind of figured that everyone would just see

what they wanted today. You know, a vital informant, an insider, a convicted criminal, a liar, whatever you want to see in Michael Cohen today, you could see it. Is that exactly how this went? Did anything actually change? So this is really the first time that someone who had a longtime relationship with

Donald Trump, who has now become antagonistic to him, is testifying under oath and really offering adverse testimony to the president in a very public setting. So it's worth all the attention it's getting because Cohen really was at the top of the Trump organization and very close to Trump for a very long time. So, you know, you could try to dismiss everything he's saying as completely made up, but he was around for a lot and he knows a lot. I did the same thing that you're doing now for 10 years. I protected Mr. Trump for 10 years. And 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. Have you heard of Vanity Fair?

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It's a podcast all about inspiring small business entrepreneurs from all sorts of places. The show's hosted by a Canadian named Anshuman Edamseti, and you can find new episodes every Wednesday in just about every place you listen to podcasts. Andrew Prokop, you've been covering the Mueller investigation

for the past 17 years. This is not the Mueller investigation, what happened today, right? No, this is a hearing by the House Oversight Committee, now controlled by Democrats. The purpose of the hearing was to get Cohen to talk about Trump's business, and he ended up making some allegations regarding Russia as well. But no, this is completely separate from Mueller. Will anything Cohen said today be used by Mueller? Cohen struck a plea deal with Mueller in which he admitted lying to Congress back in 2017.

And he went in for questioning. We know from a sentencing memo that Mueller filed in Cohen's case that Mueller said that Cohen provided useful information concerning certain discrete Russia-related matters core to the investigation. He also said that Cohen's information was credible and consistent with other evidence that he had obtained. But Cohen's cooperation with Mueller appears to be done. We haven't heard of him going in to talk to Mueller again lately. So it's very unlikely that Mueller learned anything new at this particular hearing. Do you think he even watched it? He's probably delegated maybe the intern or somebody in the office to keep an eye on things.

So what was the point of it then? If it wasn't for the Mueller investigation, why do it at all? As often with congressional hearings, the point was to put a lot of information out there in public and to make a big public spectacle. questioning has been happening behind closed doors. And his allegations have been issued in very careful, legalistic documents, indictments, court filings, and so on. But we haven't heard from Cohen's own lips under oath his alleged story about what it was like to work for Trump and his side of what happened regarding all these scandals. And there was a back and forth about that as well today, where Congressman Lynch actually laid into Republicans for not calling anyone to testify about all this stuff earlier. My friends on the other side of the aisle refused to bring any of these people up before

the committee. So today, for the first day, we have one witness who voluntarily is coming forward to testify. Your side ran away from the truth. And we're trying to bring it to the American people. And Democrats have been calling for this kind of thing for years now, right? Yes, and they couldn't do much about it when they were in the minority. But probably the most important consequence of Democrats winning the House,

as far as Trump's presidency goes, is that Democrats now have subpoena power. They did not use that today. Cohen is coming in to testify voluntarily. But they can hold hearings on topics of their choice or get witnesses to appear and subpoena them if they won't appear voluntarily. So basically, Democrats now have the ability to set the agenda and to call witnesses who will testify under oath and be vulnerable to potential criminal charges should they lie. How did it work for them today? Today was the

first time they really used this power on this scale. How did it work for them today? Today was the first time they really used this power on this scale. How did it go? I think they succeeded in their goal, which was to have a lot of clips of Cohen saying bad things about the president playing on TV all day. And on podcasts. Oh, yes, on podcasts, too. But, you know, TV is the main goal. Someday podcasts will have an equivalent level of influence. But particularly regarding President Trump, who is known for constantly watching TV, he won't like this.

And are Democrats going to keep doing this for the next two years? when they try to use their subpoena power to get administration officials to come testify or the administration to hand over documents. This is something that Republicans rarely did when they controlled the House under Trump. And Democrats think there's a whole host of scandals sitting out there that have not been adequately investigated, and they want to find these documents. And who can they and can't they call? Are there limits to the subpoena power who can they and can't they call? Are there limits to the subpoena power, the president, international figures, Putin? I don't think subpoenaing Putin

would work very well. Probably not the president either. White House staffers are also generally agreed to be off limits, but cabinet officials and also former officials can potentially be called in for testimony. We've already seen Matthew Whitaker come in to testify. He was the acting attorney general. And we could also see people who have exited the Trump administration that might have a story to tell. People like Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Secretary of Defense James Mattis. Those could be very high-profile hearings.

If these officials want to talk, they would probably be able to get their story out there. So bringing this back to President Trump, now that we have weeks of lead-up to today's events and weeks of tweets about Michael Cohen, what can we expect for what might be ahead with Democratic subpoenas and testimony about the president? In advance of Cohen's testimony, Trump has repeatedly brought up Cohen's father-in-law and suggested that there was some kind of illegality going on that Cohen doesn't want to talk about. And Cohen said that this was basically witness intimidation, threats against his family. And when he goes on Twitter and he starts bringing in my in-laws,

my parents, my wife, what does he think is going to happen? He's causing, he's sending out the same message that he can do whatever he wants. This is his country. He's becoming an autocrat. And hopefully something bad will happen to me and my children and my wife so that I will not be here and testify. That's what his hope was. It was to intimidate me. We also had on Tuesday, Representative Matthew Gates of Florida, Republican. He tweeted, Hey, Michael Cohen, 212, do your wife and father-in-law know about your girlfriends? Maybe tonight would be a good time for that chat. I wonder if she'll remain faithful when you're in prison. She's about to learn a lot, dot, dot, dot. Gates later deleted this because

it caused enormous controversy and various legal experts said that he may even have been guilty of trying to intimidate a witness from coming to testify before the house. Trump himself tweeted this morning, Michael Cohen was one of many lawyers who represented me, parentheses, unfortunately. He had other clients also. He was just disbarred by the state Supreme Court for lying and fraud. He did bad things unrelated to Trump. He's lying in order to reduce his prison time using Crooked's lawyer. That's referring to Lanny Davis. Crooked means, of course, Crooked Hillary.

Right. I remember. So much of the focus today was on what Cohen knows, but also on the fact that he has lied. And we also know that the president has lied. Did we learn anything today about how the two of them may have lied together? Cohen says that Trump very clearly conveyed to him in private back during the campaign that he should not reveal anything about the Trump Tower Moscow talks that were going on at the time. Cohen said, Mr. Trump had made clear to me through his personal statements to me that we both knew were false and through his lies to the country that he wanted me to lie.

Now, Cohen also says that Mr. Trump did not directly tell me to lie to Congress. That's not how he operates. Basically, he paints a picture of maybe not a direct order from Trump, go out and lie, but he certainly suggests that Trump knew what was going on and approved of Cohen telling these lies and wanted him to lie. Everybody's job at the Trump Organization is to protect Mr. Trump. Every day most of us knew we were coming in and we were going to lie for him on something. And that became the norm and that's exactly what's happening right now in in this country and it's exactly what's happening here in government sir Before we go, Thank you.