Michael Cohen Will Testify About Stormy Daniels Payoff This Week

Former Donald Trump lawyer and “fixer” Michael Cohen, who arranged the “hush money” payoffs to AVN Hall of Famer Stormy Daniels and Playboy centerfold model Karen McDougal, will speak in public and under oath about those payments for the first time on Wednesday, when the 52-year old—who once boasted that he would “take a bullet” for Trump—gives open testimony to Congress on Wednesday.

Cohen is scheduled to testify before the House Oversight Committee at 10 a.m. Eastern Time on February 27. A live stream of what promises to be a dramatic day of testimony may be accessed at this link

Cohen last August admitted, in making a guilty plea to campaign finance violation charges, that the payments to Daniels and McDougal were intended to “influence” the 2016 presidential election, by silencing the women about their extramarital sexual encounters with Trump. Cohen also stated in the plea that Trump directed him in making the payments.

Cohen’s lawyer, Lanny Davis, last week told ABC News that Cohen would reveal “chilling” details of Trump’s behind-the-scenes business methods, and “personal, front-line experiences of memories and incidents and conduct, and comments that Donald Trump said over that 10-year time period.’

The House Oversight Committee will not question Cohen about Trump’s possible collusion with Russia during the 2016 presidential campaign, because the investigation into the Trump-Russia connection remains the subject of an ongoing investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Instead, the committee will sero in on Cohen’s intimate involvement with the hush money payoffs to Daniels and McDougal, as well as Trump’s “debts and payments relating to efforts to influence the 2016 election,” according to the Washington Post

The committee, or at least the Democrats who control it, also plan to grill Cohen about “the accuracy of the President’s public statements” and “public efforts by the President and his attorney to intimidate Mr. Cohen or others not to testify,” according to the Post.

Republicans on the committee are likely instead to focus on breaking down Cohen’s credibility as a witness, hammering him on his guilty pleas to lying to Congress in earlier testimony, in an effort to portray Cohen as an inveterate liar who is simply angling for leniency in his criminal cases.

Cohen was sentenced in December to three years in prison after pleading guilty to lying to Congress, campaign finance violations in connection with the hush money payoffs, and other charges. Cohen had been ordered to report for prison on March 6, but a judge last week delayed the start of Cohen’s sentence until early May

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