Lanny Davis, the attorney for President Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen, accused the president of bullying his client ahead of Cohen’s scheduled testimony to the House Oversight and Reform Committee next month.
“There is genuine fear and it has caused Michael Cohen to consider whether he should go forward or not and he’s not yet made a final decision,” Davis said on MSNBC’s “The Beat with Ari Melber.”
{mosads}“He’s considering whether to go forward in light of the concerns about his family. My guess is that he won’t let a bully silence him, but I can tell you he is still considering whether to do this or not.”
While Trump said last week he is “not worried” about the hearing, he has railed against his former fixer and lawyer since he began cooperating with federal investigators, labeling him a “rat.”
“Well, there is no information. But he should give information maybe on his father-in-law, because that’s the one that people want to look at,” Trump said on Fox News, in comments that Democrats have also suggested were intended as intimidation. He also said Cohen was in trouble on “loans and frauds and taxi cabs.”
“Because where does that money — that’s the money in the family. And I guess he didn’t want to talk about his father-in-law — he’s trying to get his sentence reduced. So it’s pretty sad. It’s weak and it’s very sad to watch a thing like that. I couldn’t care less,” the president continued.
Cohen was sentenced in December to three years in prison for lying to Congress and violating campaign finance laws regarding payments during the campaign to two women who claimed to have had affairs with Donald Trump. He’s also known to be cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller’s inquiry into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow in 2016.
The president has maintained he has done nothing wrong with relation to Russia or the hush money payments.
Cohen said earlier in a statement he looks forward “to having the privilege of being afforded a platform with which to give a full and credible account of the events which have transpired.”
The announcement of the hearing is the first major power play by Democrats after they took control of the House and all of its investigative powers.