Michael Cohen (left) and Donald Trump.
Matt McClain/The Washington Post via Getty Images; Brandon Bell/Getty Images
Cohen took a shot at ‘liar’ Trump before meeting Friday with Manhattan ‘hush-money’ prosecutors.
Trump’s ex-lawyer is the key witness linking Trump to the $130,000 payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels.
Prosecutors will decide ‘soon’ on seeking a grand jury vote to indict Trump on the 2016 payment, he said.
Donald Trump’s fixer-turned-nemesis said Friday that the former president is too much of a “liar” to ever agree to testify in his own defense before a state grand jury now hearing evidence in the Manhattan district attorney’s hush-money probe.
today takes a crack at ‘liar’ on his way in to meet with Friday — as the possibility of a Trump “hush money” indictment grows.
— Laura Italiano ()
“I have to applaud District Attorney Alvin Bragg for giving Donald the opportunity to come in and to tell his story,” Michael Cohen said, responding to a New York Times report that Bragg had invited Trump to testify before the grand jury next week, as a decision on a possible indictment looms.
“Now knowing Donald as well as I do, understand that he doesn’t tell the truth,” Cohen told reporters.
“It’s one thing to lie on your ‘Untruth Social,” Cohen added, taking a shot at his former boss’s social media company before stepping inside the DA’s office for what he called a “long” meeting with prosecutors working the hush-money case.
“It’s another thing to turn around and lie before a grand jury,” Cohen said. “So I don’t suspect that he’s going to be coming.”
The grand jury has since January been hearing evidence that could link Trump to the 2016 hush-money payment to adult actress Stormy Daniels, according to published reports and independent reporting by Insider.
Cohen was the payment’s admitted “bag man,” admitting in federal court in 2018 that he arranged for Daniels to get $130,000 just weeks before the 2016 election.
Cohen was sentenced to three years prison for what federal prosecutors called an illegal campaign expenditure, for lying to Congress about plans to develop a Trump Tower in Moscow, and for a series of financial crimes.
The $130,000 was paid in exchange for Daniels’ agreement to not go public with an affair she alleged she’d had with Trump in 2006, and was an illegal campaign expenditure because it was meant to keep voters in the dark about the salacious allegations, Cohen admitted and federal prosecutors alleged at the time.
Trump has denied having an affair with Daniels and has contested that the money was a campaign expenditure.
Cohen’s attorney, Lanny Davis, who was accompanying …read more
Source:: Business Insider