Michael Cohen testimony didn’t contain Donald Trump kill shot

Michael Cohen, who speaks like a mobbed-up Woody Allen and was known to carry a gun in an ankle holster, couldn’t have timed his betrayal better, writes SARAH BLAKE in Hanoi.

President Donald Trump meets North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Hanoi. Picture: AP

Michael Cohen, who speaks like a mobbed-up Woody Allen and was known to carry a gun in an ankle holster, couldn’t have timed his betrayal better.

Few know Trump’s media management style more intimately than his former fixer and personal lawyer, Cohen.

Once the point man for numerous catch and kill stories with the trashy tabloid National Enquirer, Cohen’s job was to wrangle anyone trying to sell a story that would hurt his client, arrange for the outlet to pay them for their tale, and then bury it.

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Michael Cohen leaves after testifying before the House Oversight and Reform Committee in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. Picture: AFP

It was Cohen who paid hush money to adult film star Stormy Daniels to buy her silence about a sexual encounter with then-candidate Trump ahead of the November 2016 election, at the close personal direction, he says, of his client.

And so, with the former boss, for whom he once said he would take a bullet, out of the country and chasing peace with North Korea, the jail-bound lawyer let loose.

Describing Trump as a “racist”, a “conman” and “liar”, his testimony to Congress early this morning laid bare what he called the “mobster”-like behaviour of the president over the decades he worked for him.

President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference after a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Hanoi. Picture: AP

Cohen had intended to testify weeks ago, but the Democrat controlled House Oversight Committee allowed him to postpone his evidence.

Whether by design — as Republicans accuse — or a happy accident of scheduling, it was a masterstroke distraction that dominated the US news agenda.

And while no deal with North Korea over denuclearisation is certainly better than a bad deal, Trump tonight flew out of Hanoi with nothing tangible.

In some good news for Trump, while Cohen’s testimony was a PR blow for Trump, it did not contain the kill shot Democrats, hunting for proof the president or his campaign colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 election, had hoped for.

US President Donald Trump, left, and North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un, right, smiling during the second US-North Korea summit at the Sofitel Legend Metropole hotel in Hanoi. Picture: AFP

For his part, Trump had long wiped Cohen from his contact book, and through his 2020 campaign spokesperson he today again labelled him a disgrace.

“Michael Cohen is a felon, a disbarred lawyer, and a convicted perjurer, who lied to both Congress and the Special Counsel in a ‘deliberate and premeditated’ fashion according to the Special Counsel’s office,” she said.