Kim-Trump summit? Cohen ‘ratfest’ is front and center for U.S. media

by WorldTribune Staff, February 27, 2019

While President Donald Trump was focused on the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula in his second summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un, U.S. corporate media put the spotlight on Washington, where a man who had lied to Congress was again testifying to Congress.

Former Trump attorney Michael Cohen’s testimony before the House Oversight Committee on Feb. 27 – dubbed the “ratfest” by the Drudge Report – was the media’s main event while the Trump-Kim summit in Hanoi was the undercard.

Rep. Jim Jordan questions Michael Cohen during the House Oversight Committee hearing on Feb. 27.

In his testimony, Cohen called Trump a racist, con man and cheat. He said he regretted the work he’s done on behalf of Trump over the past decade.

In December, Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison for a variety of charges, including tax evasion, bank fraud, campaign finance violations, and lying to Congress. He has also been disbarred.

Observers of the Feb. 27 hearing say Cohen lied when he told the committee he never sought a job at the White House.

Rep. Jim Jordan, Ohio Republican, asked Cohen: “How long did you work in the White House?”

“I never worked in the White House,” Cohen responded.

“That’s the point, isn’t it, Mr. Cohen? … You wanted to work in the White House, but you didn’t get brought to the dance,” Jordan continued.

“I did not want to go to the White House. I was offered jobs. I can tell you a story of Mr. Trump reaming out Reince Priebus because I had not taken a job where Mr. Trump wanted me to, which was working with Don McGahn at the White House general counsel,” Cohen said.

Eric Trump tweeted: “Michael was lobbying EVERYONE to be “Chief of Staff.” It was the biggest joke in the campaign and around the office. Did he just perjure himself again?”

Donald Trump Jr. tweeted: “Hahahaha Michael Cohen begged to work at the White House and everyone knows it.”

Cohen admitted in his testimony that he has no evidence of Trump-Russia “collusion,” but “I had my suspicions.”

Radio host Rush Limbaugh noted; “That statement from Cohen is further exclamation point on the evidence that there wasn’t any. If there was any collusion between Trump and Russia, that would have been the first thing Cohen would have been swearing to, admitting to today. The fact that he didn’t want to go anywhere near that means that Mueller doesn’t have anything on it, it means the SDNY (South District of New York) doesn’t, because if he had that, he wouldn’t be going to jail. If he had evidence Trump had colluded with Russia, he would be a star. He would not have had to force a deal that includes jail time.”

Cohen “hasn’t alleged one illegal act here, and they know it at the Drive-Bys,” Limbaugh added. “So they are saying the fact that Cohen is reining it in, dialing it back, means that he’s credible, ’cause they know he’s not. (chuckles) How could he be?”

Rep. Jody Hice, Georgia Republican, pointed out that Cohen’s appearance on Feb. 27 marked the first time in the history of Congress that a man who has already been convicted of lying to Congress has been brought back to testify before Congress.

“That is how far, that is how low the Democrats are willing to go to try to smear Trump and drive him out of office,” Limbaugh said. “It has never happened before. Somebody convicted of lying to Congress has never been brought back as a star witness. And it’s the best they’ve got, is what this means. It’s the best they’ve got.”

Trump tweeted: “Michael Cohen was one of many lawyers who represented me (unfortunately). He had other clients also. He was just disbarred by the State Supreme Court for lying & fraud. He did bad things unrelated to Trump. He is lying in order to reduce his prison time. Using Crooked’s lawyer!”

Current Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani blasted Cohen, saying in a statement to The Washington Post that Cohen’s testimony is “pathetic” and that “This is a lawyer who tapped his own client when he claimed he was being loyal. If you believe him you are a fool.”

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement that “disgraced felon Michael Cohen is going to prison for lying to Congress and making other false statements. Sadly, he will go before Congress this week, and we can expect more of the same. It’s laughable that anyone would take a convicted liar like Cohen at his word, and pathetic to see him given yet another opportunity to spread his lies.”

Cohen will get more opportunities. He testifies before the House Intelligence Committee on Feb. 28 in a closed-door session.

That the Cohen hearing took place on the same day as the Trump-Kim summit in Hanoi, led to another Limbaugh commentary: “Imagine being so distraught, so out of sorts, so bamboozled, so destroyed by losing an election that you would even go so far as to distract or perhaps sabotage nuclear peace talks from the political party which has attempted over the course of my life to portray nuclear weapons as the absolute worst thing – goes back and forth between that and climate change. And we’ve gotta do anything we can to get rid of nuclear weapons. We can’t have Ronald Reagan in charge of nuclear weapons. Ronald Reagan’s a cowboy, his finger on the nuclear button. We’ve lived all through this panic and fear.

“And now all of a sudden Democrats don’t care about nuclear weapons, don’t care about the effort to get North Korea, an aggressive state, to denuclearize? North Korea has not launched a missile in 457 days. They haven’t conducted a nuclear test in 543 days. They have destroyed a major missile engine test. And Trump is over THERE trying to continue this progress in North Korea, something no Democrat has ever been able to do.

“No Democrat president, no Republican president has ever made this kind of progress de-nuking North Korea, and here’s the Democrat Party today attempting to undermine and sabotage that and everything else. Because, folks, what remains the objective is to drive all of you Trump supporters away from Donald Trump. This is the next phase, perhaps the most intense phase that they’ve engaged in yet, and it’s happening because Mueller has nothing, and they are panicking. And Democrat donors are panicking.”


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