News / Politics

Cohen provides US House intel panel with new documents behind closed doors

Wednesday, 06 March 2019 8:58 PM [ Last Update: Wednesday, 06 March 2019 9:04 PM ]

Michael Cohen, former attorney and fixer for President Donald Trump, arrives at the secure offices of the House Intelligence Committee in the basement of the House Visitors Center at the US Capitol March 06, 2019 in Washington, DC. (Photo by AFP)

President Donald Trump's longtime attorney Michael Cohen has provided US lawmakers with new documents about his previous statements.

Sentenced to three years behind bars and ordered to pay a $50,000 fine last year, Cohen was supposed to head to jail Wednesday but instead he went to Capitol Hill to expound on US President Donald Trump’s alleged crimes.

Cohen appeared Wednesday before the House Intelligence Committee, where he gave the lawmakers new documents, backing his claims that the written statement he delivered to Congress in 2017 had been edited and reviewed by the lawyers of Trump, his daughter Ivanka, and her husband, Jared Kushner, both serving as advisers at the White House.

PressTV-‘Days of protecting Trump are over’

President Donald Trump's longtime fixer Michael Cohen has spoken for the last time before heading to prison for a series of tax and campaign finance charges.

His 2017 testimony was about the Trump Tower Moscow project amid the 2016 presidential campaigning, which yielded President Trump.

"There were changes made, additions -- Jay Sekulow, for one," Cohen said during his House testimony last week. "There were several changes that were made including how we were going to handle that message, which was -- the message of course being -- the length of time that the Trump Tower Moscow project stayed and remained alive."

Trump's then-personal lawyer Jay Sekulow rejected the allegation, stating that "testimony by Michael Cohen that attorneys for the President edited or changed his statement to Congress to alter the duration of the Trump Tower Moscow negotiations is completely false."

PressTV-Trump: Cohen hearing led to N Korea summit failure

President Trump suggests that the questioning of his former lawyer Cohen on the same day as the key summit with Kim Jong-un may have led to the collapse of the talks.

Cohen further claimed that he had been encouraged by the president to lie.

"He doesn't tell you what he wants. What he does is again, 'Michael, there's no Russia, there's no collusion, there's no involvement, there's no interference.' I know what he means because I've been around him for so long," Cohen testified. "That's the message that he wanted to reinforce."

Cohen's testimony distracted media attention last Wednesday from Vietnam, where the president was holding his second summit with North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un.

During the 2016 presidential campaign Trump asserted on several occasions that, "I have nothing to do with Russia. I don't have any jobs in Russia. I'm all over the world but we're not involved in Russia.

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