Michael Cohen to go before House Intel again next week

Former Trump attorney Michael Cohen is planning to return to the House Intelligence Committee to continue his closed-door testimony next week. 

Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) first confirmed to The Hill that Cohen would return Wednesday to finish testifying. Cohen and Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) later told reporters Cohen had agreed to return next Wednesday. 

“We talked about a lot of things,” Speier, a member of the Intelligence Committee, said when asked about what committee lawmakers had learned in the first six hours of Cohen’s testimony Thursday. “We are just now getting into some of the more substantive issues.”

“He’s coming back next week,” Speier said, adding he had agreed to come back on Wednesday. Speier declined to go into details about what the interview focused on.

“He is tired, and we’ve gotten through a quarter [of the questions],” she said.

Thursday was Cohen’s third day in a row of testimony on Capitol Hill. The former Trump attorney and Trump Organization executive testified publicly for over seven hours before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday, describing a pattern of nefarious and illegal activity by his former boss in the decade he worked for him.

Cohen’s closed-door appearances before the Senate and House Intelligence Committees on Tuesday and Wednesday, respectively, were expected to focus largely on his past false testimony regarding discussions within the Trump Organization to build a Trump Tower in Moscow during the 2016 campaign. In November, Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about the plans, admitting that they extended into June 2016 – six months longer than he originally told lawmakers and at which point Trump was the presumptive GOP nominee.

Schiff also indicated he was hoping to question Cohen on allegations he made Wednesday with respect to Trump’s knowledge of communications between longtime GOP operative Roger Stone and WikiLeaks.

Both the House and Senate Intelligence Committees are investigation Russian interference in the 2016 election and the possibility the Trump campaign coordinated with Moscow to meddle in the vote.

The Republican-led probe in the House was shuttered last spring, but Schiff revived the investigation after Democrats took control of the House. He also expanded it to look into Trump’s financial dealings and the possibility he could be “compromised” by Russia or another foreign power.

Cohen is due to report to federal prison in May to serve a three-year sentence for a series of crimes he pleaded guilty to last year.