Report: President Donald Trump Directed Michael Cohen to Lie to Congress

Andrew Donaldson

Born and raised in West Virginia, Andrew has since lived and traveled around the world several times over. Though frequently writing about politics out of a sense of duty and love of country, most of the time he would prefer discussions on history, culture, occasionally nerding on aviation, and his amateur foodie tendencies. He can usually be found misspelling/misusing words on Twitter @four4thefire and his food writing website Yonder and Home. Andrew is the host of Heard Tell podcast. Subscribe to Andrew's Heard Tell SubStack for free here:

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17 Responses

  1. LeeEsq says:

    The Republicans attempted to remove Clinton from office for lesser offenses. We are in some sort of sick parody of life where there really doesn’t seem to be any justice. Instead we get to be administrated by absolutely horrible people that are causing untold pain and suffering by the hundreds of thousands with no end in sight.

    Meanwhile, the entire family separation cruelty saga turns out to be much wider in scope than people thought:

    https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/1/17/18186773/families-children-separated-trump-thousands

    I assume George will be around soon to defend this all.Report

  2. North says:

    This is all impressive in of itself but the airtight professionalism of Mueller and his team is what really strikes me. He makes Ken Starr look like the empty suit partisan hack that he was. I’d be quaking in my boots if Mueller and his team were coming after me. The silence that comes out of his group is just astonishing.Report

    • Michael Cain in reply to North says:

      I have remarked from time to time that watching Mueller’s investigation is like watching the prosecutors roll up an organized crime family from when I lived in NJ. (After the fact, I learned that I knew someone on one of those grand juries, and heard about the security arrangements for the jurors and witnesses.) Once after I said it, a friend pointed out that Mueller oversaw the Gambino family investigations in the 90s. There’s a part of me that wonders if he ever says to his wife when he gets home, “Feels like old times.”Report

      • greginak in reply to Michael Cain says:

        The gambino’s were smarter and slicker.Report

      • North in reply to Michael Cain says:

        I guess I haven’t read enough about prosecutors rolling up organized crime families. I honestly didn’t think that you could run a group of civilians with so few leaks. How many people are working under Mueller? Wikipedia says 15 attorneys and over 30 people once you count in their immediate staff? Getting that many lawyers to keep their yaps shut? It feels a little like competence porn or something.Report

        • Michael Cain in reply to North says:

          Just saying “attorneys” is misleading. Mueller’s staff is very largely prosecutors that have handled organized crime or complex white collar cases, investigators from specific parts of the Justice Department (eg, national security), and FBI agents. Almost all of them come from a background where leaks kill cases. Short version — not civilians in the way I think you intended the word.Report

    • James K in reply to North says:

      @north

      My impression of senior US officials in general is that they’re largely a bunch of self-aggrandising hacks, probably because senior people in the US government tend to be politically appointed.

      So I have to say, it’s been a real pleasure watching someone with the competence and professionalism of Muller at work – he’s a credit to the Federal government.Report

  3. Marchmaine says:

    Fascinating… but y’all are doing it wrong.

    If the story is true, don’t impeach Trump for instructing a minion to lie to congress… impeach him for using the office of the Presidency to negotiate with a foreign potentate for personal gain — that’s the offense you are looking for.

    Assuming, of course that Mueller rolls up the financials to back-up the claim. It gets a little foggy if the deal fell through and there isn’t a record of something to the effect of, “when I’m president, I’ll…”, but then it gets less foggy if the financials expose Trump’s real levels of debt to Russian oligarchs… the debt that’s on the second set of books, not the books used for the IRS.

    But sure, if failing all of the above you want to push the rock up the hill for instructing a subordinate to lie to congress – politicians shouldn’t do that – then push away. I’d just push from the side, sort of obliquely like.Report

    • CJColucci in reply to Marchmaine says:

      Why not both?Report

    • Stillwater in reply to Marchmaine says:

      If the story is true, don’t impeach Trump for instructing a minion to lie to congress… impeach him for using the office of the Presidency to negotiate with a foreign potentate for personal gain — that’s the offense you are looking for.

      This impeachable offense remains in play regardless of whether Trump directed Cohen to lie to congress or not, an observation which highlights, imo, the specific way things have gone sideways: Trump’s critics are overly reliant on Mueller only because we’ve all internalized the belief that the GOP will not act as a check on Trump’s behavior, that the GOP will continue to go to the mat to protect his presidency and only a finding of actual criminal behavior will suffice to invoke articles of impeachment.*

      Now, I don’t know that Pelosi agrees with that framing, of course. She may invoke articles merely on the BuzzFeed reporting, or on one of the many other allegations against Trump which meet the threshold of a high crime or misdemeanor. But the fact that Trump’s behavior is viewed by the GOP and the conservative base as consistent with the constitutional obligations of his office, and that the bar for impeachment of a Republican president has been raised so high (effectively, that his criminal behavior must be demonstrated before impeachment proceedings begin) is the crisis of the moment, and not specifically that Trump is., eg., an asset of the Russians or whatever.

      *An obvious question on this point: would the GOP – McConnell and McCarthy – agree to impeachment proceedings on such a finding if presented by Mueller? It’s an open question, right?Report

      • Dark Matter in reply to Stillwater says:

        This is Fox, but NPR said the same thing. Mueller is effectively claiming buzzfeed is putting out fake news (not how they phrased it).

        https://www.foxnews.com/politics/mueller-team-disputes-buzzfeed-report-claiming-trump-told-cohen-to-lie

        Mueller team disputes BuzzFeed report claiming Trump told Cohen to lie.

        Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office on Friday issued an extraordinary statement disputing a bombshell news report that claimed President Trump directed Michael Cohen to lie about the timing of discussions over a proposed Trump Tower project in Moscow.

        “BuzzFeed’s description of specific statements to the Special Counsel’s Office, and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office, regarding Michael Cohen’s Congressional testimony are not accurate,” Peter Carr, a spokesman for Mueller’s office, said.Report