By Allan Lengel
ticklethewire.com
There should be more excitement Wednesday on Capitol Hill than at this last Super Bowl.
President Donald Trump’s ex-lawyer Michael Cohen takes to the world stage as he appears before Congress to tell his story about his boss.
Michael Cohen is set to deliver a blistering account of his dealings as President Donald Trump’s longtime attorney Wednesday, casting his former boss as a “a conman” and “racist’ while tying the White House more directly than ever to multiple investigations that have shadowed Trump’s presidency.
In a prepared statement to Congress, Cohen asserted that Trump knew in advance that WikiLeaks planned to release stolen emails damaging to political rival Hillary Clinton; that he personally reimbursed Cohen for an illegal hush-money payment to a porn star; and that the president indirectly encouraged him to lie to Congress about his pursuit of a potentially lucrative Trump Tower development in Moscow, even as Trump repeatedly denied any business interests in Russia throughout the 2016 campaign.
Cohen also suggested that Trump knew in advance of a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower, headed by Donald Trump Jr., in which a Russian lawyer promised to provide damaging information on Clinton.