In sworn testimony before Congress on Wednesday, Michael Cohen called his former boss, President Trump, a conman and racist. To back up his claims that the President is a racist, Cohen recalled a statement Trump made about Black Chicago residents.
“While we were once driving through a struggling neighborhood in Chicago, he commented that only Black people could live that way,” Cohen said in a prepared statement before the House Oversight and Reform Committee.
“And he told me that Black people would never vote for him because they were too stupid,” Cohen added. “And yet I continued to work for him.”
Cohen recalled other incidents in his prepared statement.
“Mr. Trump is a racist,” he said. “The country has seen Mr. Trump court white supremacists and bigots. You have heard him call poorer countries ‘shitholes.’ In private, he is even worse.
“He once asked me if I could name a country run by a Black person that wasn’t a ‘shithole,'” Cohen said. “This was when Barack Obama was president of the United States.”
House Republicans attacked Cohen who was convicted last year of lying to Congress about a deal to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. Cohen testified on Wednesday that he lied to protect Mr. Trump.
Rep. Jody Hice (R-GA) accused Cohen of making the allegations because Trump declined to offer him a White House position as chief of staff after taking office in January 2017.
In a statement to the Washington Post on Wednesday, Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney and fixer, said only a fool would believe Cohen’s lies.
“It’s pathetic. This is a lawyer who (taped) his own client when he claimed he was being loyal. If you believe him, you are a fool,” Giuliani said. “He bragged he was connected to Russian organized crime and he may be. His father-in-law who gave him millions to (invest) was convicted of tax fraud in a money-laundering operation. Let’s see if these Democrats want to ask about his many crimes having nothing to do with anyone but his coterie of business associates with questionable connections.”
Wednesday was day 2 of three consecutive days of congressional appearances for Cohen. The disbarred former lawyer will appear before the House Intelligence Committee where he will speak in private on Thursday.
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