Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former fixer and personal attorney, has accepted a plea deal that includes cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation on election interference, collusion and obstruction of justice. However, all of this might not amount to anything because much like his former boss, Cohen’s ass stay lying too.
In fact, Cohen “pleaded guilty to lying to congressional panels investigating Russian interference in the election last year,” The Hill reports.
The Hill notes:
According to court documents unsealed on Thursday, Cohen admitted to lying about Trump’s Moscow property plans, including his plans to travel to Russia and contacts with Russian officials in connection with the project and how long the property plans were discussed within the Trump Organization.
The criminal information alleges that Cohen “well knew” that his statements to Congress about the Moscow project were “false and misleading,” stating that he told the lies in order to “minimize links between the Moscow Project and Individual 1,” an apparent reference to Trump.
It also says that Cohen aimed to “give the false impression that the Moscow Project ended before ‘the Iowa caucus and … the very first primary,’ in hopes of limiting the ongoing Russia investigations.”
Now that Cohen has been caught lying and has entered a guilty plea to one count of making a false statement, he’s really ready to tell the truth. Herein lies the problem with liars.
Cohen, much like the rest of the Trump administration, will do anything to save his own ass. And he’s liable to walk into Mueller’s office and ask for a cup of coffee and a bag of flaming hot Cheetos and start telling everything. But how will Mueller know whether or not he’s telling the truth?
Cohen likely knows where all the Russian urine is hidden considering he worked for the orange bag of bacon grease for more than a decade. The Hill notes that at one point Cohen was even the Vice President of the Trump Organization.
Trump accused Cohen of “lying” to prosecutors in order to get a lesser sentence shortly after his former lawyer appeared at the courthouse in New York City.
“He’s a weak person and what he’s trying to do is get a reduced sentence,” Trump told reporters at the White House before leaving for a summit in Argentina. ”So, he’s lying about a project that everybody knew about.”
Cohen pleaded guilty to a slew of federal crimes in a separate case in the Southern District of New York in August, implicating Trump in a nondisclosure-payment scheme in dramatic court testimony.
Since he pleaded guilty in New York, there have been numerous reports that Cohen has been voluntarily cooperating with Mueller and interviewing with investigators on numerous occasions.
According to the new court filings, Cohen lied in written and verbal testimony before the House and Senate Intelligence Committees last year. He falsely told them that the Trump-branded property in Moscow was under consideration between September 2015 and January 2016, when in reality prosecutors say that discussions about it within the Trump Organization extended as late as June 2016.
The documents also suggest that Cohen discussed the plans with Trump on more than three occasions and that he also briefed Trump’s family members on it.
The documents also say that Cohen agreed to travel to Russia in connection with the project, which he denied before Congress, but that he ultimately called off plans for the trip.
Oh and Cohen is now admitting that when he said he didn’t “recall” any contact between the Russian government and the Trump-branded property, that was a lie. In fact, according to The Hill, Cohen “remembers exchanging emails with a press secretary working in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s office about the proposed property plans ‘in or around January 2016.’”
Telling lies is in the “skills” section of Cohen’s resumé, right after “porn star hush money delivery” and “Finding dry cleaners who can get the smell of urine out of custom suits.”
Cohen has already given false statements to investigators and he now says that he is willing to tell the truth in exchange for a lighter sentence. Expecting the truth from a proven liar is like expecting the Lauryn Hill concert to begin promptly at 8 p.m.— I wouldn’t bet on it.
The problem with liars is that ... well, they’re liars.