Michael Cohen’s attorney Lanny Davis suggested Wednesday that President Trump knew about hacked Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails before they were released during the 2016 presidential election.
Davis asserted during an appearance on CNN’s “Situation Room” that Cohen, Trump’s former longtime personal attorney, observed Trump’s “awareness” of the hacked emails before they were published by WikiLeaks.
“I believe that he [Cohen] observed and saw Mr. Trump being aware of the use of emails to damage [Democratic presidential nominee] Hillary Clinton’s campaign. That could only have been derived through illegal hacking from a Russian agency called WikiLeaks,” Davis said. “I believe there is some information Mr. Cohen could provide to [special counsel Robert] Mueller that would be of interest to Mr. Mueller.”
“What I’m suggesting is that Mr. Cohen was an observer and was a witness to Mr. Trump’s awareness of those emails before they were dropped and it would pertain to the hacking of the email accounts,” he continued.
Davis: ” I don’t know if it’s a smoking gun or how decisive it is. What I’m suggesting is that Mr. Cohen was an observer and was a witness to Mr. Trump’s awareness of those e-mails before they were dropped, and it would pertain to the hacking of the e-mail accounts.” pic.twitter.com/2NAPjf7Vut
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) August 22, 2018
Mueller last month indicted 12 Russian intelligence officers in the 2016 DNC hack.
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WikiLeaks had published hacked emails from the DNC and Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta in the months leading up to the 2016 election.
The U.S. intelligence community has maintained that the Russians were intending to help elect Trump, who has refuted that assessment.
Davis’s comments Wednesday regarding Trump’s “awareness” of the hacked emails come a day after the lawyer made a similar suggestion on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show.”
“We know he publicly cheered it on, but did he also have private information?” Davis said of the president while discussing the hack.
Davis, who is a contributor to The Hill, added on MSNBC that Cohen “is more than happy to tell the special counsel all that he knows.”