Watch Live: House Hearing Begins With ex-Trump Lawyer Cohen
WASHINGTON (AP) – The Latest on President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen (all times local):
4:55 p.m.
President Donald Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, says he’s seen the president’s tax returns but hasn’t gone through them.
Cohen is testifying Wednesday before the House oversight committee.
Trump broke with decades of tradition for presidential candidates by refusing to release his income tax filings during his 2016 campaign. He has said he won’t release them because he is being audited.
Cohen on Wednesday undercut that rationale, saying he presumes Trump is not being audited.
Cohen says he asked Trump for paperwork about the audit to prepare Trump’s response to reporters about the issue but never received any documentation.
Cohen says Trump didn’t want to release his tax returns because he “didn’t want an entire group of think tanks, who are tax experts, to run through his returns.”
WASHINGTON (AP) 2:10 p.m. – Fordham University is confirming it received a letter from Donald Trump’s then-lawyer threatening legal action if Trump’s academic records became public.
Ex-Trump lawyer Michael Cohen has testified to Congress that Trump directed him to write letters warning his schools and the College Board not to disclose his grades or SAT scores.
Cohen has given the House Oversight and Reform Committee a copy of his letter to Fordham. It was dated May 2015, about a month before Trump started his presidential campaign.
Fordham says the letter from Trump’s lawyer was preceded by a phone call from a campaign staffer. Fordham says it’s bound by federal law barring the release of student records.
Trump attended the Roman Catholic university in New York City for two years. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania.
Penn and the College Board declined to comment.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen (all times local):
11 a.m.
Former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen says he wouldn’t accept a pardon from the president and he didn’t ask for one.
Cohen is testifying under oath before the House Oversight and Reform Committee — and has said that Trump instructed him to pay off women who said they’d had affairs with the president. Trump has denied the claims.
For more than a decade, Cohen was a key power player in the Trump Organization and a fixture in Trump’s political life.
Cohen is set to begin a three-year prison sentence in May after pleading guilty to lying to Congress in 2017 and committing campaign finance violations while he was working for Trump.
Cohen says he’s speaking before the committee to set the record straight and try to atone for some of his mistakes.
WASHINGTON (AP) – A congressional hearing is underway featuring the much-anticipated public testimony from Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer.
Cohen is expected to detail before the House Oversight and Reform Committee what he believes is Trump’s lying, racism and cheating, and possibly even criminal conduct.
Cohen, who was Trump’s longtime fixer, is the first high-profile witness called before the committee as newly empowered Democrats pursue an aggressive effort to investigate the president.
Cohen played a pivotal role in buying the silence of a porn actress and a former Playboy Playmate who both alleged they had sex with Trump. The president has denied their claims.
Cohen has pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations connected to the payments and to lying to Congress.
He’s set to begin a three-year prison sentence in May.
