WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen was “fully cooperative” during closed-door testimony before a congressional committee investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S election, the panel’s chairman said yesterday.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, a Democrat, said Cohen would return for further questioning on March 6 to give lawmakers another chance to follow up on allegations of wrongdoing that Cohen leveled at his former boss this week.
“I think we all feel it was a very productive interview today where he was able to shed light on a lot of issues that are very important to our investigation. We were able to drill down in great detail,” Schiff told reporters.
Schiff said the panel also will talk to Felix Sater, a Russian-born property developer and former business associate of Trump, in a public session on March 14 to talk about efforts to build a Trump tower in Moscow.
Sater, who worked with Cohen on the project while Trump was running for president, has said he and Cohen at one point talked about giving a $50 million penthouse to Russian President Vladimir Putin as a way to justify raising the prices of other units in the envisioned tower.
Cohen pleaded guilty last year to lying to Congress about the Moscow project, but Schiff said he answered all of the panel’s questions. The testimony will eventually be made public, he said.
Cohen spoke before three congressional panels this week that are examining Russian election meddling and any collusion with the Trump campaign.
In dramatic public testimony on Wednesday before the House Oversight Committee, Trump’s one-time “fixer” accused the president of breaking the law while in office and said for the first time that Trump knew in advance about a WikiLeaks dump of stolen emails that hurt his 2016 election opponent Hillary Clinton.
Committee chairman Elijah Cummings, a Democrat, said his panel would further investigate issues raised by Cohen’s testimony and may try to get the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., and his former accountant, Allen Weisselberg, to testify.
