- This morning, Donald Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen testified before Congress about Trump and the 2016 presidential election.
- Cohen made numerous shocking allegations against Trump, and we’ve highlighted the most shocking of them below.
This morning, Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former lawyer, former “fixer,” and former vice president of the Trump Organization, testified before Congress. Cohen spoke about Trump’s relations with Russian agents and involvement with the infamous WikiLeaks email hack that later damaged Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign as well as the POTUS’s history as a “con man” and a “cheat.”
Cohen is due to start a prison sentence in two months for previously lying to Congress about Russia’s involvement in the 2016 election (he alleges he was pressured into lying by Trump). When the hearing began, Chairman Elijah Cummings warned that if Cohen is lying today, he “will be the first to refer those untruthful statements to the DOJ.” What followed was Cohen’s opening statement and a series of truly distressing and horrific statements.
Here are the most outrageous things Cohen alleged about Trump, presented in his own words and without commentary:
1. Trump threatened his high school so his SAT scores wouldn’t be released.
“When I say ‘con man,’ I’m talking about a man who declares himself brilliant but directed me to threaten his high school, his colleges, and the College Board to never release his grades or SAT scores.”
“The irony wasn’t lost on me at the time that Mr. Trump in 2011 had strongly criticized President Obama for not releasing his grades.”
2. Trump not only had an affair with a porn star but also lied to Melania Trump about it.
“He asked me to pay off an adult-film star with whom he had an affair and to lie to his wife about it, which I did. Lying to the First Lady is one of my biggest regrets.”
3. Apparently Trump didn’t think he’d win the primary *or* the presidential election.
“He never expected to win the primary. He never expected to win the general election. The campaign—for him—was always a marketing opportunity.”
4. He ran to build his brand, not to run the country.
“Donald Trump is a man who ran for office to make his brand great, not to make our country great. He had no desire or intention to lead this nation—only to market himself and to build his wealth and power. Mr. Trump would often say this campaign was going to be the ‘greatest infomercial in political history.’”
5. Cohen alleges that Trump fully knew about the Democratic email hack.
“A lot of people have asked me about whether Mr. Trump knew about the release of the hacked Democratic National Committee emails ahead of time. The answer is yes.”
6. And he was glad to hear it would likely damage Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
“Mr. [Roger] Stone told Mr. Trump that he had just gotten off the phone with Julian Assange and that Mr. Assange told Mr. Stone that, within a couple of days, there would be a massive dump of emails that would damage Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Mr. Trump responded by stating to the effect of ‘wouldn’t that be great.’”
7. Trump is definitely a racist.
“Mr. Trump is a racist. The country has seen Mr. Trump court white supremacists and bigots. You have heard him call poorer countries “sh*tholes.’”
8. Like, really, really racist.
According to Cohen, “He once asked me if I could name a country run by a black person that wasn’t a ‘sh*thole.’ This was when Barack Obama was President of the United States.”
“While we were once driving through a struggling neighborhood in Chicago, he commented that only black people could live that way.”
9. Trump had an effed-up theory about why black people wouldn’t vote for him.
“And he told me that black people would never vote for him because they were too stupid.”
10. Our POTUS is apparently proud he dodged the draft.
“Mr. Trump claimed [his Vietnam draft deferment was] because of a bone spur, but when I asked for medical records, he gave me none and said there was no surgery.”
“He told me not to answer the specific questions by reporters but rather offer simply the fact that he received a medical deferment. He finished the conversation with the following comment. ‘You think I’m stupid, I wasn’t going to Vietnam.’” Okay, then.
11. He thinks his son, Donald Trump Jr., has the worst judgment.
“Mr. Trump had frequently told me and others that his son Don Jr. had the worst judgment of anyone in the world. And also that Don Jr. would never set up any meeting of any significance alone—and certainly not without checking with his father.”
12. Cohen said Trump knew that his son met with Russian agents before the election, since Trump Jr. doesn’t do anything without consulting his dad.
Sometime in the summer of 2017, I read all over the media that there had been a meeting in Trump Tower in June 2016 involving Don Jr. and others from the campaign with Russians, including a representative of the Russian government, and an email setting up the meeting with the subject line ‘Dirt on Hillary Clinton.’ Something clicked in my mind. I remember being in the room with Mr. Trump, probably in early June 2016, when something peculiar happened. Don Jr. came into the room and walked behind his father’s desk—which in itself was unusual. People didn’t just walk behind Mr. Trump’s desk to talk to him. I recalled Don Jr. leaning over to his father and speaking in a low voice, which I could clearly hear, and saying: ‘The meeting is all set.’ I remember Mr. Trump saying, ‘Okay good...let me know.’
I also knew that nothing went on in Trump world, especially the campaign, without Mr. Trump’s knowledge and approval. So, I concluded that Don Jr. was referring to that June 2016 Trump Tower meeting about dirt on Hillary with the Russian representative when he walked behind his dad’s desk that day—and that Mr. Trump knew that was the meeting Don Jr. was talking about when he said, ‘That’s good…let me know.’
13. Trump allegedly lied about his net worth and cheated on his taxes without regrets.
“When telling me in 2008 that he was cutting employees’ salaries in half—including mine—he showed me what he claimed was a $10 million IRS tax refund, and he said that he could not believe how stupid the government was for giving ‘someone like him’ that much money back.”
14. Trump pressured Cohen into lying to Congress about ongoing business negotiations in Russia during the presidential campaign, and Trump lied to the American people about it.
“Mr. Trump did not directly tell me to lie to Congress. That’s not how he operates. In conversations we had during the campaign, at the same time I was actively negotiating in Russia for him, he would look me in the eye and tell me there’s no business in Russia and then go out and lie to the American people by saying the same thing. In his way, he was telling me to lie.”
15. Trump was actively involved in the Trump Tower Moscow negotiations.
“To be clear: Mr. Trump knew of and directed the Trump Moscow negotiations throughout the campaign and lied about it. He lied about it because he never expected to win the election. He also lied about it because he stood to make hundreds of millions of dollars on the Moscow real estate project.”
16. Trump used a fake bidder during a charity auction so he could obtain a portrait of himself and use it for financial gain.
“Mr. Trump directed me to find a straw bidder to purchase a portrait of him that was being auctioned at an Art Hamptons Event. The objective was to ensure that his portrait, which was going to be auctioned last, would go for the highest price of any portrait that afternoon. The portrait was purchased by the fake bidder for $60,000. Mr. Trump directed the Trump Foundation, which is supposed to be a charitable organization, to repay the fake bidder, despite keeping the art for himself.”
17. Trump directed Cohen to use his personal accounts so money couldn’t be traced back to him and damage his campaign.
“Mr. Trump directed me to use my own personal funds from a Home Equity Line of Credit to avoid any money being traced back to him that could negatively impact his campaign. I did that too—without bothering to consider whether that was improper, much less whether it was the right thing to do or how it would impact me, my family, or the public.”
“I am going to jail in part because of my decision to help Mr. Trump hide that payment from the American people before they voted a few days later.”
18. Cohen suggested Trump committed another illegal act that’s currently under investigation.
Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi: “Is there any other wrongdoing or illegal act that you are aware of regarding Donald Trump that we haven’t yet discussed today?”
Cohen: “Yes, and again, those are part of the investigation that is currently being looked at by the Southern District of New York.”
19. Cohen warned Trump’s followers they will “suffer the same consequences” he is.
“I did the same thing that you’re doing now for 10 years. I protected Mr. Trump for 10 years....I can only warn people: The more people that follow Mr. Trump as I did blindly are going to suffer the same consequences that I’m suffering.”
Shannon is a news writer at Cosmopolitan.com, and when she's not obsessing about Cardi B, she's thinking about Justin Bieber and still trying to memorize Beyoncé's Beychella choreography.
