Michael Cohen, Trump’s accuser, will struggle to be believed
Michael Cohen’s testimony about Donald Trump is compelling, but undermined by his credibility gap.
In The Godfather Part II, there’s a memorable scene in which a former associate of Michael Corleone, heir to the eponymous Sicilian crime boss, appears in a US Senate committee room prepared to deliver damning testimony that his ultimate boss is indeed a criminal, a murderer, a mafia don who controls a vast illegal gambling empire across the US.
Just before he begins his evidence the government’s co-operating witness spots his own brother, alongside Michael himself among the spectators, glowering menacingly over the proceedings. The brothers exchange pregnant glances, and the Godfather’s fixer, consigliere and bagman then stuns the hearing room, proceeding to deny any knowledge of criminal activity by the family.
After co-operating with the FBI for months, the star witness now recants, saying he had simply “told the FBI guys what they wanted to hear”. The hearing breaks up in disarray and Tom Hagen, the Corleone family lawyer, says: “This committee owes an apology!”
Life only sometimes imitates art, and in Washington yesterday there was no “Frankie Five Angels” Pentangeli moment for the packed meeting of the House of Representatives oversight committee. Instead, Michael “No Angel” Cohen, Donald Trump’s fixer, consigliere and bagman, proceeded to deliver the goods he had promised the FBI about the dark character and felonious misdeeds of the President of the United States.
The President, for whom he had worked for 10 years, was “a racist, a conman, and a cheat”, he said. Over the next few hours, Cohen, who once boasted that he would “take a bullet” for Trump, proceeded to spray machinegun fire over his reputation. He said he had seen Trump lie to colleagues and the public; defraud business associates and contractors; and indulge in the ugliest stereotypes. But his most important accusations directly implicated Trump in a number of criminal and potentially impeachable offences.
The President, he said, had engaged in criminal conduct while in office. He produced a cheque for $US35,000 that he said Trump had given him in 2017 as reimbursement for a payment made to buy the silence of Stormy Daniels, the porn star who said she’d had an affair with Trump. If true, this payment could represent a violation of federal campaign finance laws.
Cohen further said Trump knew in advance that Julian Assange of WikiLeaks was planning to release to the public a trove of damaging emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee by Russian-led operatives.
He said he and Trump had discussed on a number of occasions throughout the 2016 presidential campaign plans for the Trump Organisation to construct a building in Moscow, a potentially lucrative project that required official Russian co-operation. And he suggested Trump knew in advance about a June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower between associates of the Kremlin and, among others, his son Donald Jr and his son-in-law Jared Kushner.
Trump has vehemently denied any foreknowledge of that meeting, which his accusers allege was a critical part of a series of collusive operations between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.
On the face of it, Cohen’s sworn testimony adds up to the most damning claims about a sitting president since at least the Watergate hearings into Richard Nixon in 1974. It’s clear that, in addition to what he has told US congress this week, Cohen has been downloading similar and perhaps even more damning allegations to Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election. Mueller is due to submit his report any day now.
But there’s a problem. For all the colour and drama, the egregious allegations, for all their plausibility (they certainly seem to fit a broader reported pattern about Trump’s attitudes and behaviour), Cohen’s own credibility is, as it were, not exactly unimpeachable.
In 2017, the same Cohen testified before a congressional committee, also under oath, that, in effect, butter wouldn’t melt in Trump’s mouth. He denied knowledge of any Russia collusion and he explicitly denied there had been any conversations during the presidential campaign about the Moscow tower project.
For lies spoken during this testimony, Cohen later pleaded guilty to the charge of perjury. On top of that, he has also pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations related to the Stormy Daniels payment.
In short, Cohen is a convicted felon, a perjurer, about to serve time in a federal penitentiary in part for lying. In his sentencing in December, Cohen received a measure of leniency in recognition of his extensive co-operation with prosecutors.
While Democrats yesterday hung on every word from Cohen’s lips, Republicans made hay with his credibility problem. “This is the first time a convicted perjurer has been brought back to be a star witness,” said Jim Jordan, the top Republican on the committee, while other members of the President’s party took turns denouncing the testimony.
There was little sign that any Republican was moved.
None of this tells us anything about the ultimate outcome of the Mueller investigation. The special counsel may well have damning evidence that corroborates the testimony of a flawed witness. We shall see soon.
Yesterday’s proceedings were another compelling episode in this long story worthy of the finest movie screenwriters. But in the end, Cohen’s riveting testimony seems likely to prove as effective in bringing down the main character in this drama as was the silence of “Frankie Five Angels” in another.
The Times
Gerard Baker is a former editor-in-chief of The Wall Street Journal.