US President Donald Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen has claimed Mr Trump knew beforehand about a leak of hacked Democratic emails.
In congressional testimony, Cohen also said Mr Trump directed plans for a Moscow skyscraper even during his White House campaign.
In a blistering opening statement, Cohen branded Mr Trump a “racist”, a “conman” and a “cheat”.
Mr Trump hit back: “He is lying in order to reduce his prison time.”
The US president took time out from preparing to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Hanoi, Vietnam, on Wednesday to lash out in a tweet at his former fixer.
Cohen, 52, will start a three-year prison term in May for the campaign finance violation of paying hush money to one of Mr Trump’s alleged mistresses, tax evasion and lying to Congress.
What did Cohen say about the email leak?
In his public testimony to the House of Representatives Oversight Committee on Wednesday, Cohen said he was in Mr Trump’s office in July 2016 when Roger Stone, a longtime political adviser, called the then-Republican presidential candidate.
Cohen said Mr Stone rang Mr Trump to say he had been speaking to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who told him there would be a “massive dump” of emails within a couple of days that would politically embarrass Hillary Clinton’s White House campaign.
The witness said Mr Trump responded along the lines of “wouldn’t that be great”.
Mr Trump has denied having prior knowledge about Wikileaks’ disclosure of Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails during the election.
The messages caused a damaging rift among Democrats by exposing party officials’ preference of Mrs Clinton over her challenger for the presidential nomination, Bernie Sanders.
Mr Stone, a self-proclaimed political dirty trickster, is currently facing charges of lying to Congress about his communications with Wikileaks and witness tampering.
What did Cohen say about Moscow project?
He said Mr Trump “knew of and directed” plans for a Trump Tower Moscow, while stating publicly that he had no business dealings in Russia.
“He lied about it because he never expected to win the election,” said Cohen. “He also lied about it because he stood to make hundreds of millions of dollars.”
However, Cohen has been convicted of lying to Congress when he testified in 2017 that attempts to build a Trump skyscraper in Moscow had stopped by January 2016.
He has since acknowledged negotiations actually continued until June 2016 in the midst of the election campaign, though the real estate project ultimately did not go ahead.
Cohen apologised on Wednesday for his earlier false statements to Congress, which he claimed were “reviewed and edited” by Mr Trump’s lawyers.
What else did he say about Russia?
Cohen testified that, contrary to Mr Trump’s repeated claims, he seemed to have advance knowledge of a meeting at Trump Tower in Manhattan between his campaign aides and a Russian lawyer promising “dirt” on Mrs Clinton.
The June 2016 meeting has been investigated by special counsel Robert Mueller, who is winding up a 21-month justice department inquiry into whether the Trump campaign colluded with an alleged Kremlin plot to influence the 2016 US presidential election.
Cohen spoke about an incident when Mr Trump’s son, Donald Jr, walked behind his father’s desk and told him in a low voice: “The meeting is all set.”
Mr Trump, Cohen told the hearing, replied: “OK good, let me know.”
Importantly, Cohen also said under oath that he has no direct evidence that Mr Trump or his campaign colluded with Russia.
“I do not,” he said. “I want to be clear. But I have my suspicions.”
Source: BBC
