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Michael Cohen has raised a litany of allegations against his former boss, Donald Trump, during an explosive testimony before Congress this week, involving the president and his entourage in potential illegal acts on multiple accounts.
House Democrats are now considering using Cohen's revelations as a plan to bring key witnesses to the table and pursue avenues of investigation, according to their Republican counterparts, ignored. This will likely trigger a steady stream of public hearings involving the president's relatives, while Democrats seek more damaging revelations.
No one, including Trump's adult children, Donald Jr and Ivanka, or the guardian of his finances, Trump Organization head Allen Weisselberg.
"All you have to do, is to follow the transcript," told reporters Elijah Cummings, chairman of the house oversight and reform committee, before which Cohen had testified Wednesday to reporters at Capitol Hill. "If there were names that were mentioned, or documents that were mentioned at the hearing, we want to look at all that."
The issues raised by Cohen, who worked for almost 10 years as Trump's attorney and personal repairer, were innumerable and covered many of the ongoing investigations under the supervision of Special Attorney Robert Mueller and federal prosecutors of the Southern District of New York.
Democrats have warned not to interfere in the work of these investigations, especially in the pending outcome of the special council's investigation in the imminent future. But Cohen's testimony, they said, provided several new pieces of evidence that laid the groundwork for further investigation of Trump's trade relations, tax returns, ties to Russia, and a possible impediment to justice.
"If Mr. Cohen's allegations are correct, it means the president, while in power, was engaged in criminal activity while he was at the Oval Office, reinforcing this fraudulent campaign scheme." Adam Schiff, Chair of the House Intelligence Committee. , told CNN.
Following Cohen's testimony, Democrats in the House focused on at least three main lines of inquiry: negotiations on the construction of a Trump tower in Moscow during the 2016 campaign; secret payments to women and attempts by the president and his team to engage in alleged concealment; and Cohen's claims that Trump knowingly committed insurance fraud.
Cohen also testified before the House Intelligence Committee on Thursday for nearly eight hours behind closed doors, which Democrats said reinforced the need to follow more aggressively some of the leads that have been revealed so far.
After the closed session, Schiff announced that Cohen would appear again before the House Intelligence Committee on March 6 for an in camera hearing. Schiff also said that Felix Sater, a former Trump associate with ties to the Russian crowd, was scheduled to testify publicly before the commission on March 14.
Sater would have been involved in talks around the Trump Tower project in Moscow and reportedly suggest including a $ 50 million penthouse for Russian President Vladimir Putin. As the proposal finally collapsed, the conversations became the focus of investigators who investigated whether the Trump campaign had been conspired with Moscow.
Donald Jr and Ivanka, two of Trump's children, were also trapped in these discussions. Cohen testified that he was informed about "about 10 times" about the project. Donald Jr had previously sworn to the Senate Intelligence Committee that he had "only" indirect knowledge of it, while Ivanka Trump had said that he knew nothing about the plan. last month, saying in an interview that she knew "practically nothing".
Cummings said the House oversight committee would request talks with Donald Jr and Ivanka.
Donald Jr and Weisselberg are also interested in their role in paying hidden sums to adult movie actress Stormy Daniels, who was paid $ 130,000 by Cohen to prevent her from speaking out before the election of 2016 on his alleged affair with Trump ten years earlier.
"Don Jr and Allan Weisselberg are both in serious trouble," said Lawrence Tribe, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard Law School. "Cohen's testimony has opened the door to a multitude of questions."
In his testimony on Wednesday, Cohen said as evidence that checks from Trump's personal bank account indicated that it was about hidden money repayments. One was signed by Trump himself and another by Donald Trump Jr and Weisselberg.
Federal prosecutors said the payments were a violation of the US campaign finance law.
Donald Jr was separately a source of surveillance following the infamous Trump Tower meeting in New York City in June 2016, during which he met with other Trump campaign lawyers with a Russian lawyer after his arrest. be made to promise to mess with Hillary Clinton.
Cohen said on Wednesday that the then candidate, Trump, was aware of the meeting and told him that Donald Jr would never have approved it without prior solicitation.
Legal experts have said that Cohen's testimony could be a problem for Donald Jr, especially if the president's son is perjury in Congress – one of the crimes for which he is about to imprison Cohen.
According to Tribe, one of the key questions for investigators would be to know if there was "extrinsic evidence to corroborate or disprove Cohen's account of the conversation between Trump and Don Jr".
In addition to Trump's children, Democrats in the House said they would ask Weisselberg to testify before Congress.
Weisselberg's relationship with the Trump family dates back to Fred Trump, the late father of the president, and spans over four decades.
According to Cohen, Weisselberg presided over a number of trump-related trump payments, some of which are not publicly known. Cohen also said Weisselberg would have the proceeds of other wrongdoing on the part of the Trump organization, and asserted that he had first-hand knowledge of the fact that Trump allegedly committed tax evasion and insurance fraud by inflating his holdings.
If Trump was in fact guilty of financial fraud and insurance for lying about his net worth, Tribe said, some of these offenses usually had a ten-year limitation period.
Last year, federal prosecutors granted Weisselberg immunity to testify as part of the Southern District of New York's investigation into the payment of sums of money.
The Democrats promised to leave nothing to chance, paving the way for the 2020 elections that will see Trump and his family being trapped by numerous investigations while he was trying to be re-elected.
"I'm going to follow the facts and everything that comes out well," said Cummings.
"We just want to make sure that the government is responsible, and this administration, this branch is responsible."
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