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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Former Donald Trump attorney Michael Cohen is reconsidering his intention to testify publicly in the US Congress next month following the president's intimidation, a senior advisor said on Thursday. Cohen.
FILE PHOTO: Michael Cohen, former US President Donald Trump's attorney, arrives for his sentence in US court, in the Manhattan area of New York City, United States. December 12, 2018. REUTERS / Jeenah Moon / File Photo
Lanny Davis, a lawyer who advised Cohen on his media strategy, said in an interview with MSNBC that some of the Republican president's remarks about Cohen were a witness to the news. alteration and deserved a criminal investigation.
"There is a real fear and this has led Michael Cohen to wonder if he should go ahead or not, and he has not made a final decision," he said. said Davis.
Last week, Cohen agreed to appear before a congressional panel on Feb. 7, as Democrats in the US House of Representatives began investigating Trump, his business interests, and his administration. .
In December, Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison for making illegal cash payments hidden to two women in order to help Trump in 2016, in violation of election laws, and to have lied in Congress on a draft Trump Tower project in Russia.
In an interview with Fox News on Saturday, Trump suggested he had detrimental information about Cohen's father-in-law. "That's the one people want to watch," Trump said during the interview.
Davis stated, "There is no doubt that his threats and his calls to his father-in-law, who – quote – has all the money, are not just inappropriate and unbecoming for a tyrant who uses the tyrannical chair of the presidency, but the very definition of intimidation and falsification of witnesses. "
He stated that Trump's remarks" could be a hindrance to justice. "
Trump called Cohen" rat "last month for cooperating with prosecutors." Cohen had been the "repairer" long time ago that Trump himself had described and had already stated that he would take a bullet for the New York real estate developer.
At a federal court hearing in New York in August, Cohen said that Trump had ordered him to commit a crime by arranging payments before the 2016 election to two women who had reported having extramarital affairs with Trump.
Cohen said Thursday that he had paid a enterprise to manipulate online survey data "under the direction and for the sole benefit of" Trump
Tim Ahmann's report, edited by James Dalgleish and Cynthia Osterman
Thomson Principles Reut Trust
