Yesterday Trump lawyer Michael “Says Who?” Cohen was scheduled to talk privately with the Senate Intelligence Committee, however thanks to his releasing his public remarks to the press the committee opted to cancel this appearance and instead “invited” to have him appear in a public hearing before the them in October.
The announcement comes after the committee abruptly canceled the closed door interview it had planned with Cohen earlier in the day. The committee was unhappy that Cohen had released his opening statement to the press, in apparent violation of the committee’s agreement to let him testify behind closed doors.
Coming out of a seperate closed door briefing Tuesday afternoon, they elaborated that it is now the committee’s policy that those appearing behind closed doors for interviews regarding the Russia investigation must keep their statements to the committee private.
“We’ve changed the agreement that we’ve had with people since Jared Kushner was in,” Burr told said, referring to the President’s son-in-law, who released a statement with his closed door appearance in front of the committee this summer.
“And this is the model we’ll follow. We don’t expect individuals who come behind closed doors to publicly go out and tell…” Burr continued, before being interrupted by Warner
“…their side of the story only,” Warner interjected.
But it seems that Cohen has essentially released “his side of the story only” after lying to the Senate when he claimed he would abide by their rules, and now we have a chance to review that story and compared it to much of what we know and has been report, unfortunately for Cohen his known as a “tough guy” who likes to threaten opponents openly, once threatened the Daily Beast with $500 Million lawsuit, likes to carry a revolver in an ankle holster and once claimed that a there can be no “rape” between a married couple even though most state laws say that their can be, this statement shows mostly that Cohen is nearly a year behind the curve on the details of the Russia investigation and has more than a bit of a tendency to whine, lie and complain.
The Statement via TPM.
Thank you for inviting me to speak with you today.
As part of this statement, I would like to accomplish two things.
First, I want to comment briefly but clearly on the presumed subject of this morning’s interview. Second, I want to address what I believe are the implications of it.
Let me be totally clear that I am innocent of the allegations raised against me in the public square, which are based upon misinformation and unnamed or unverifiable sources.
Ok, you’re innocent of the allegations based on “unnamed or unverifiable sources” — sure, but what about the allegations based on your own comments and emails?
I have never engaged with, been paid by, paid for, or conversed with any member of the Russian Federation or anyone else to hack anyone or any organization.
Yeah, except for the time you sent an email to Dmitri Peskov of the Kremlin inside the Russian Federation asking them for help in restarting the stalled Trump Tower Moscow project in Mid-January of 2016.
“Over the past few months I have been working with a company based in Russia regarding the development of a Trump Tower-Moscow project in Moscow City,” Cohen wrote to Peskov, according to a person familiar with the email. “Without getting into lengthy specifics, the communication between our two sides has stalled.
“As this project is too important, I am hereby requesting your assistance. I respectfully request someone, preferably you, contact me so that I might discuss the specifics as well as arranging meetings with the appropriate individuals. I thank you in advance for your assistance and look forward to hearing from you soon,” Cohen wrote.
No, you did not ask them to “hack” anything, they’d already started doing that earlier in 2015, but the fact that you were trying to move forward a project in a country that was under international sanctions, using a bank that was specifically sanctioned which would have violated the Trading with the Enemy Act — is frankly as bad, if not worse, than asking someone to “hack anyone or any organization”.
I have never engaged with, been paid by, paid for, or conversed with any member of the Russian Federation or anyone else to hack or interfere with the election.
True, but you and your pal Felix Satir did plot to help Trump win the election with the aid of the Russians, particularly by sealing the Trump Tower Moscow deal. Sater wrote to you:
“Michael I arranged for Ivanka to sit in Putin’s private chair at his desk and office in the Kremlin. I will get Putin on this program and we will get Donald elected. We both know no one else knows how to pull this off without greed or stupidity getting in the way. I know how to play it and how to get this done. Buddy, our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it,” Sater wrote in one email, according to the Times. “I will get all of Putin’s team to buy in on this, I will manage this process.”
So yeah, that sounds a bit like asking the Russian Federation for “help” in the election, and since no foreign counties can legally do that it’s… concerning. Also since you and Sater were private citizens at the time negotiating to change U.S. policy with a Putin friendly member of the Ukrainian government could potentially be a violation of the Logan Act.
I have never engaged with, been paid by, paid for, or conversed with any member of the Russian Federation or anyone else to hack Democratic Party computers; and I have never engaged with, been paid by, paid for, or conversed with any member of the Russian Federation or anyone else to create fake news stories to assist the Trump campaign or to damage the Clinton campaign.
And yet those fake news stories, generated by the Russian Federation and disseminated by RT and Sputnik news as well as InfoWars and Breitbart were created, then repeated by the Trump campaign. For example Hillary Clinton does not have Parkinsons Disease. She was not involved in a child sex ring Pizza parlor. Several of these false stories were repeated by the Trump campaign and those associated with it such as Michael Flynn’s son. Trump himself repeated several false Sputnik/RT stories and brought up Wikileaks — who illegally stole and dIstributed private data from the DNC and John Podesta — almost 170 times during the last weeks of the campaign.
No, as far as we now know you didn’t pay for or converse with members of the Russian Federation about hacked emails or false stories directly, but when they made those emails and other false stories available for your use, you and Trump really didn’t complain or hesitate to make use of their ill-gotten gains and false stories for your own benefit now did you?
Given my own proximity to the President of the United States as a candidate, let me also say that I never saw anything – not a hint of anything – that demonstrated his involvement in Russian interference in our election or any form of Russian collusion.
So you just didn’t happen to “see” that time that J.D. Gordon decided to block a plank on the RNC platform that would have benefited the Ukraine in the struggles against Russia — and then watch him lie about having done it, until finally admitting it was done at Donald Trump’s request not to “go to war” over Crimea?
And I guess you were completely unaware of the meeting between Kushner, Manafort and Donald Jr. where they had agreed to receive “Dirt” on Hillary Clinton from Russian sources even though FEC rules state that receiving anything of value from a Foreign nation in an election is prohibited and illegal?
It is also unlawful to help foreign nationals violate that ban or to solicit, receive or accept contributions or donations from them. Persons who knowingly and willfully engage in these activities may be subject to fines and/or imprisonment.
The federal code of regulations defines “Solicitation” as…
“To ask, request, or recommend, explicitly or implicitly, that another person make a contribution, donation, transfer of funds, or otherwise provide anything of value.”
You didn’t notice the time Trump called for Russia to “hack and/or release Hillary’s deleted emails” which was a direct solicitation/endorsement for hacking that information?
And even if you claim that was “Just a joke” you were completely unaware that Flynn associate Peter W. Smith attempted to contact Russian Hackers — just as Trump had asked — in order to gain those missing emails?
Peter W Smith, a long time operative with Donald Trump's Republican Party, assembled a team to look for approximately 33,000 emails that Ms Clinton said she deleted from her private email server.
The US leader challenged Russian hackers to uncover them during the campaign.
Mr Smith believed the emails had already been obtained by Russian hackers, and that they may provide evidence of wrongdoing by Ms Clinton.
So, like Wow, when you saw “not a hint of anything” of involvement with “Russian Interference” — you obviously mean other than emailing the Kremlin for help that would have “made Trump President”, changing around the RNC platform planks to make them more likeable to Russia then lying about it, trying to accept illegal gifts of opposition research from the Russian Government, trying to receive stolen emails and also directly asking the Russians to interfere by releasing that stolen information. Clearly your powers of observation are keen and insightful.
I emphatically state that I had nothing to do with any Russian involvement in our electoral process.
Sure, except for Satir’s emails to you, your email to Peskov asking for help and the last four items above that is.
And then there was the time you and Satir decided to negotiate a “peace deal” between Ukraine and Russia that would have 1) Required the current regime in Ukraine to be disbanded 2) allowed Russia to retain all of the territorial gains in Ukraine and Crimea and 3) dropped all sanctions against Russia including those that would have blocked to completion of project like Trump Tower Moscow.
You have since given the press 4 different stories of what happened to the detailed text of this “Plan” displaying that you are an inveterate liar, but frankly crafting and/or helping facilitate a plan of this type specifically to appease Russia when they had done literally nothing to deserve it would be exactly the type of payback that might have motivated them to initiate their attack on our electoral system and push to place Trump into a place where he could support and implement such a plan in the first place.
So sure, you had nothing to do with Russia being involved in our electoral process, other than potentially trying to get them their payoff for the crime. And if that wasn’t the reason, what exactly was the rationale for letting Russia get away with — let me say this carefully — STEALING. A. SOVEREIGN. COUNTRY?
Particularly when your own wife, Laura, is from that country, Ukraine. And your younger brother is married to a woman from the Ukraine. Other the fact that you happen to have an ethanol business in Ukraine, how does it work that you were willing to sell out their country to Russia and what were you hoping to gain for it?
Oh wait, perhaps a Trump Tower Moscow deal that you were begging for from Dmitri Peskov?
I’m just spitballing here, but could that be the reason? And if not, what else might it possibly be?
In fact, I find the activities attributed to the Russian Federation, if found to be true, to be an offense to our democracy.
Do tell. I think it might be nearly an act of war.
As an attorney, I believe justice ought not to be politicized in the United States of America – neither in this Senate office nor in the courts. I’m certain that the evidence at the conclusion of this investigation will reinforce the fact that there was no collusion between Russia, President Trump or me.
As an attorney, you should know better than to attempt to presume the outcome of an ongoing investigation before all the facts have been discovered.
I’m also certain that there are some in this country who do not care about the facts, but simply want to politicize this issue, choosing to presume guilt – rather than presuming innocence – so as to discredit our lawfully elected President in the public eye and shame his supporters in the public square … this is un-American.
So basically anyone who thinks we should continue to pursue this matter to conclusion are Anti-Americans who don’t care about facts?
Yes, of course there should be a presumption of innocence, funny that I don't recall that happening even after Hillary Clinton was exonerated of legal wrong doing by the FBI while Trump and his supporters continued to chant “Lock Her Up, Lock Her UP.”
Wasn’t Michael Flynn one of those persons leading that chant and claiming “if I’d done what she’s done, I’d be in jail” — a statement he made when he knew he had repeatedly violated Pentagon requirements to get prior approval before accepting foreign payments which he received from RT, Kaspersky Labs, as a lobbyist for Turkey and while attempting to establish a Nuclear Plant deal with Saudi Arabia with yet another sanction Russian company? I do think he was.
I am here today to reiterate my own innocence regarding the false allegations raised against me. What I seek is the Committee making a public conclusion about the truth or falsity of the allegations that follow.
My reputation was damaged in December 2016 when BuzzFeed published an unverified dossier prepared by a retired British spy – Christopher Steele – that was riddled with total falsehoods and intentionally salacious accusations.
In my opinion, the hired spy didn’t find anything factual, so he threw together a shoddily written and totally fabricated report filled with lies and rumors. The New York Post recently noted that much of the information in the dossier appeared at points to be copied from the internet; with typographical errors included.
Funny that other intelligence agencies around the world have confirmed many of the core communications documented in the Steele Dossier did in fact happen between the persons he listed and on the dates he identified.
My name is mentioned more than a dozen times in the lie-filled-dossier and so within moments of BuzzFeed’s publication, false allegations about me were plastered all over the national and international press. The accusations are entirely and totally false.
Says you. We’ll see.
A core accusation was that I had traveled to Prague to meet with Russians regarding interfering with the election.
I have never in my life been to Prague or to anywhere in the Czech Republic. I might also add that I only have one passport (a United States Passport). I have to say that to you today – that I only have one passport – because another media outlet suggested that – as a Jew – I must also have an Israeli passport!
Aside from such an allegation being incredibly offensive, it is also totally wrong.
Let me tell you where I was on the day the dossier said I was in Prague.
I was in Los Angeles with my son who dreams of playing division 1 baseball next year at a prestigious university like USC. We were visiting the campus, meeting with various coaches, and discussing his future. Media sources have been able to confirm these facts and I can provide you with proof.
Further reporting indicates that the Michael Cohen mentioned in that section of the dossier wasn’t you.
The dossier you call “false” predicted that 19% of Rosneft stock would be sold, and it got that completely wrong because soon afterward 19.5% of Rosnect was sold. It discussed that Paul Manafort may be at risk for having taken $Millions in cash from groups supporting ex-Ukrainian President Yanakovych, and he was. It talked specifically about the cyber operations capability of the FSB who have been connected directly to the hacks, the trolls and bots, long before any of that was publicly known and that the entire operations was authorized from “highest levels” in the Kremlin, which has also been confirmed by the Department of Homeland Security.
The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations. The recent disclosures of alleged hacked e-mails on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks and by the Guccifer 2.0 online persona are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts. These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the US election process. Such activity is not new to Moscow—the Russians have used similar tactics and techniques across Europe and Eurasia, for example, to influence public opinion there. We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia's senior-most officials could have authorized these activities.
So the dossier got that right also. Not exactly “entirely and totally false.”
My wife and I have been married for 23 years, and are now entering into the season of our lives when we get to watch our children become adults themselves. My daughter, who is at an Ivy League school, and my wife, who is of Ukrainian descent, have especially been subjected to harassment, insults and threats … some so severe I cannot share them in mixed company.
You’re not alone. Ask the families of various CNN employees whose personal contact details were released by Trump supporters and who have received repeated death threats since. And it’s to like Trump hasn’t continue to swirl this waters by retweeting videos of himself physically attacking CNN and personally assaulting Hillary Clinton.
So yeah, I understand the seriousness of your concerns for the safety of your family. Do you feel the same for families of CNN staff? Do you feel the same for Hilary Clinton?
Call me cynical, but I doubt it.
You might say that the experiences I am living through are the cost of being in the public eye, but they shouldn’t be as I am not a government official. Many Trump supporting Americans are also paying this cost, like the twelve year old child in Missouri who was beaten up for wearing a Make America Great Again hat.
A boy was beaten up for wearing a MAGA hat? That is genuinely sad and tragic. That shouldn’t happen. America should be above such a thing.
Unfortunately it’s not.
White supremacist groups connected with those who had chanted “Hail Trump, Hail Victory” plotted to commit violence and use vehicles to attack their opponents in Charlottesville, leaving Heather Heyer dead, Deandre Harris beaten bloody and at least 19 others seriously injured. Afterward Richard Spencer claimed “We could have killed them with our bare hands.”
That shouldn’t have happened either, and it was little worse than one kid getting beaten up.
But speaking of beatings, a Trump fan who was known to spread “pizza gate” rumors was beaten at a pro-Impeachment rally in Philadelphia. A black former law enforcement officer was “beaten like a slave” by white police in Garden City. In Baltimore a 21-year-old black man who had himself called 9-1-1 for assistance was beaten to death by police. TSA agents beat a disabled woman bloody after she became confused and afraid at the security checkpoint. A Vermont transgender man was beaten to death in an apparent Hate crime. Gay activists were attacked and beaten by men chanting Trump’s name. Pro-KKK protestors chanted “Trump” while demonstrating against changing the names of pro-Confederate streets in Florida. White kids around the nation have been using Trump’s name to bully their classmates, and also used “Build the Wall” as a harassing chant particularly when they are hispanic. An 8 year-old black boy was nearly lynched by a gang of white teenagers in New Hampshire. A 12 year-old boy was brutally beaten by attackers who chanted “Kill the jew.” A Muslim man was beaten to death by a construction worker he had hired. Another Muslim was beaten for speaking Arabic on a Philadelphia street. Yet another was beaten while his attackers chanted “ISiS.” Knife wielding men attacked hispanic teens and their family at a playground in Los Angeles. Two men in Portland were killed by a knife-wielding bigot, who had been in the midst of an anti-Muslim rant threatening two young girls. A machete wielding Trump fan attacked Democrats in a Kentucky.coffee shop. An Israeli Christian man killed his daughter because of her Muslim boyfriend. A Minnesota mosque was attacked in what the Governor called an “act of Terrorism”, yet Trump has yet to comment on that Terrorism, or the attack on the Mosque in London.
All of that sort of thing is tragic, but unfortunately it’s been going around and Trump hasn't really been helpful even when he has bothered to notice or respond to any of it. Instead he’s falsely attacked the Mayor of London for telling people not to be concerned by the presence of armed police and wrongfully claimed “both sides” were responsible for the violence Charlottesville.
Not exactly clear moral leadership.
Comparing all this, which is by no means a comprehensive list of the rise of Hate Crimes in the wake of Trump, to the poor kid in the MAGA hat, someone might think you only included that little tidbit to make Trump supporters seem like some type of “victims” who are helpless against their vicious attackers. Some might think you were attempting to play on people sympathies with tails of your oppression. Some might think that you were trying to imply that only that one poor kid has suffered lately, which is kind of a whining punk move.
Since Donald Trump won the Presidential election, there has been a dramatic uptick in incidents of racist and xenophobic harassment across the country. The Southern Poverty Law Center has reported that there were four hundred and thirty-seven incidents of intimidation between the election, on November 8th, and November 14th, targeting blacks and other people of color, Muslims, immigrants, the L.G.B.T. community, and women. One woman in Colorado told the S.P.L.C. that her twelve-year-old daughter was approached by a boy who said, “Now that Trump is President, I’m going to shoot you and all the blacks I can find.” At a school in Washington State, students chanted “build a wall” in a cafeteria. In Texas, someone saw graffiti at work: “no more illegals 1-20-17,” a reference to Inauguration Day.
So, yeah, he’s not the only one. Not hardly.
You can oppose the President’s points of view and his policies, but not raise false issues about the validity of his victory.
Actually you can raise valid issues about whether fake Russian propaganda posted in Facebook ads and promoted by online social media bots and trolls was used to depress and suppress the Democratic vote in key swing districts and states by the 77,000 needed to allow Trump to squeak out a narrow victory in a race he shouldn’t have won. I mean that only happens to be exactly the plan that was developed by a pro-Putin Russian Think Tank, so it’s not really something Trump’s enemies cooked up just to “invalidate his victory”, apparent his friends in Moscow did that.
You can and should ask why they did that? You can ask what they expected to get in return for it, like for example the removal of sanctions over Crimea which would allow Trump Tower Moscow to be built or perhaps allow the $500 Billion Oil deal with Rosneft and Exxon to go forward. Or perhaps both, it’s absolutely a fair question to ask. Why’d they do it?
I assume we will discuss the rejected proposal to build a Trump property in Moscow that was terminated in January of 2016; which occurred before the Iowa caucus and months before the very first primary. This was solely a real estate deal and nothing more. I was doing my job. I would ask that the two-page statement about the Moscow proposal that I sent to the Committee in August be incorporated into and attached to this transcript.
Again, as the proposed financial source for that project was VTB Bank who remain under sanctions, that was potentially an attempt to violate TWTEA, which doesn’t require that the act be deliberate or planned. Why this proposal was being pursued during the election is also curious and potentially an FEC problem as well, and isn’t it curious that you yourself were later personally involved in a plan to drop sanctions on Russia which would again, allow projects like that one to go forward? Hmmm...
I’m very proud to have served Donald J. Trump for all these years, and I’ll continue to support him.
If we really are concerned about a Russian attempt to divide our country and discredit our political system then the best thing we can do is put aside our infighting, stop presuming guilt rather than innocence of American citizens, and address this national security threat as a united people at its source.
Yeah, that would be nice. When exactly has Trump stopped presuming Hillary Clinton’s guilt rather than her innocence in any number of cases, again? When has he admitted that Obama didn’t “Wiretap Trump Tower” using GCHQ? Just curious.
Otherwise, the priorities of the American people will continue to be neglected, and the Russians will use our distraction to continue to harm us from the shadows while we harm each other in front of the camera lights.
I’m pretty sure they’re going to do that anyway. The question is how to prevent that, and whether any Americans either helped them or as some intercepts indicate asked for their help in interfering with our election as has been alleged with Paul Manafort. Or seems to be what Felix Sater wanted to do, again, when he said: “I will get Putin on this program and we will get Donald elected.”
How exactly would “getting Putin on the program” get Donald elected precisely? How was that supposed to work?
I look forward to answering all of your questions today.
Well, you didn’t really do that either now did you? Too bad. See you on C-Span.