Anti-Trump Democrats are denying it, such is their zeal to overturn the 2016 election and impeach the president or cripple him as the 2020 election nears, but Michael Cohen appears to have perjured himself six times before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday.
GOP Representatives Jim Jordan of Ohio and Mark Meadows of North Carolina leveled the charge in a criminal referral they sent to the Justice Department. Cohen, they wrote, “committed perjury and knowingly made false statements.”
Jordan, ranking minority member of the committee, tweeted that the disbarred lawyer “made at least six false statements” during testimony in which he called the president a “racist,” a “cheat,” and a “conman.”
In December, Cohen pleaded guilty and received a three-year prison term in cases prosecuted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller and federal authorities in New York.
The Referral
“While testifying under oath,” the Jordan-Meadows referral avers, “Cohen made what appear to be numerous willfully and intentionally false statements of material fact contradicted by the record established by the Justice Department” in Cohen’s convictions.
Cohen’s testimony, the two congressmen wrote, “at times was in direct contradiction to assertions contained in pleadings authored by federal authorities in New York.” And his statements “were immediately contradicted by witnesses with firsthand knowledge of the subject matter.”
Among the lies Jordan and Meadows charge Cohen with telling are that “I never defrauded any bank.”
“These denials are intentionally false,” they wrote to U.S. Attorney General William Barr. Noting the crimes to which Cohen pleaded — tax evasion, lying to a banking institution, illegal campaign contributions, and lying to Congress — they wrote that prosecutors, in their sentencing memorandum, “specifically referred to Mr. Cohen’s crimes of making false statements to financial institutions as ‘bank fraud.’”
And as The New American reported yesterday, during a testy exchange with Jordan, Cohen claimed he never sought a job at the White House. Jordan and others immediately proved that claim false.
Wrote Jordan and Meadows, “this is demonstrably, materially, and intentionally false” because it contradicts the sentencing memo from federal prosecutors in New York, which said Cohen “told friends and colleagues, including in seized text messages, that he expected to be given a prominent role and title in the new administration.”
As well, shortly after Cohen denied seeking a job in the White House, private eye Bo Dietl, the famed former gumshoe with the New York Police Department who arrested Henry Hill in Goodfellas, tweeted what he knew: “I know Michael Cohen personally for many years and he told me several times that he was very angry and upset that he didn’t get a post in the WH and that he ‘would do what he has to do now to protect his family.’”
Jordan and Meadows also pointed to a tweet from Darrell Scott, a pastor and Trump campaign faith-based outreach coordinator. Tweeted Scott, “Michael Cohen asked … no, BEGGED me REPEATEDLY, to ask the POTUS to give him a job in the Administration! He’s STILL lying under oath!”
Eric Trump tweeted likewise. “Michael was lobbying EVERYONE to be ‘Chief of Staff.’ It was the biggest joke in the campaign and around the office. Did he just perjure himself again?”
As well, Jordan and Meadows wrote, Cohen lied about creating a pro-Cohen Twitter account (@WomenForCohen), payments to porn star Stephanie Clifford, and whether he violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
The two congressmen also wrote that Cohen even lied when he said that his “blind loyalty” to the president “has cost me everything — my family’s happiness, friendships, my law license, my company, my livelihood, my honor, my reputation, and soon my freedom.”
“This too is a false statement,” the two wrote, because prosecutors and the judge in Cohen’s case attributed his ignominious downfall to “greed and ambition.”
The referral repeatedly says Cohen multiple times undermined his own credibility.
Cohen’s testimony was “a spectacular and brazen attempt to knowing[ly] and willfully testify falsely and fictitiously to numerous material facts,” and “prior conviction for lying to Congress merits a heightened suspicion that he has yet again testified falsely before Congress.”
Democrats Believe
Anti-Trump Democrats saw no problems with Cohen’s testimony.
Cohen’s attorney, former Clinton torpedo Lanny Davis, claimed his client told the truth, and it “may not be surprising that two pro-Trump Committee members made a baseless criminal referral.”
The Democratic chairman of the committee, Maryland’s Elijah Cummings, believes the convicted perjurer: “He said he wasn’t [lobbying for a job] and I believe him. I mean, think about it. He could make a helluva lot more money, a helluva lot more money, outside the White House than in the White House. I mean, I don’t know why you would want to do that.”
Photo: AP Images
