Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer, is to testify before the US House Oversight and Reform Committee in a public session today (Feb. 27). He will be addressing his own past lies in congressional testimony about Trump’s business practices in the run-up to the 2016 election and what Cohen alleges is Trump’s criminal conduct (paywall) as president.
His opening statement (PDF), provided to several media outlets last night, is a no-holds-barred accounting of the alleged mistruths and misdeeds that Cohen was directed to perform at Trump’s behest. Cohen sums it up with this notable line near the top: “I am ashamed because I know what Mr. Trump is. He is a racist. He is a conman. He is a cheat.”
Cohen’s testimony, at the second of three congressional sessions for him this week, is his first public accounting before Congress of his decade of involvement with the president. The New York Times reports (paywall) he has already spent up to 70 hours with special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators and with federal prosecutors in New York.
His appearance before the oversight committee begins at 10am US Eastern time and can be seen on the panel’s website and on C-SPAN, the major US broadcast and cable-news outlets and their sites.
This morning, naturally, Trump tweeted back at Cohen’s planned opening remarks.