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House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, R-Ky., are again referring President Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen to the Justice Department for prosecution over the alleged lies he told to Congress, House Republicans confirmed.
In a letter sent on Wednesday to Attorney General Merrick Garland, Jordan and Comer wrote that Democrat Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is using Cohen as a “star witness” in his ongoing criminal investigation of President Trump, despite the disbarred former attorney being a supposed “repeated liar” during his previous testimony.
Per the referral, the majority of Bragg’s case “heavily relies” on Cohen’s “testimony and credibility.”
Amid Cohen’s ongoing testimony against President Trump in Manhattan, both congressmen compared his credibility as witness in the case as a “politically motivated prosecution of a former president and current declared candidate for that office,” and that the ex-attorney should be held “accountable for his false statements to Congress.”
Jordan and Comer further added that Cohen was previously referred to the Justice Department “for perjury and making false statements during his testimony” to the House Oversight Committee in February 2019, referencing six specific lies the ex-lawyer allegedly made in New York Attorney General Letitia James’ civil trial against President Trump.
Cohen reportedly “made willfully and intentionally false statements” during a 2019 deposition to Congress, which Comer and Jordan wrote were contradicted by witnesses with firsthand knowledge of the case.
According to the congressmen, the lies included Cohen’s denying committing multiple fraudulent acts, which eventually led to his prosecution in federal court.
“Congress cannot perform its oversight function if witnesses who appear before its committees do not provide truthful testimony,” both Jordan and Comer wrote in their address to the attorney general.
Among Cohen’s alleged lies were his denial of fraudulent acts, testifying that he did not seek employment in the Trump administration, and claiming in a “Testimony for Truth” form that he did not have any foreign government contracts.
Cohen previously spent three years in prison after pleading “guilty” in 2018 for five counts of tax evasion, another count of campaign finance violations, and one count of his making false statements to a bank.
These charges were made in relation to payments Cohen reportedly made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels as part of a nondisclosure agreement in 2015, which the ex-lawyer implied he made at the direction of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump, according to a report from The Hill.
Per Fox News, the Trump attorney supposedly gave Daniels a reported $130,000 hush money payment prior to the 2016 presidential election.
Then-candidate Donald Trump then made several payments of $35,000 to Cohen, according to the report, which Bragg is trying to prove were a reimbursement for the hush money payment.
President Trump’s attorneys have urged that the $35,000 payments were “not a payback,” but rather legal payments.
Although Cohen has not yet testified against President Trump in an official capacity, he is expected to soon appear in court at the behest of Alvin Bragg.
