Wednesday, President Donald Trump’s personal attorney appeared before the House Oversight Committee providing details about what he knows about ongoing investigations into the President. What new details were revealed? WGVU spoke with a national investigative reporter following the case.
“A lot of people have asked me about whether Mr. Trump knew about the release of the hacked documents, the National Democratic National Committee email, ahead of time…and the answer is yes.”
That’s President Donald Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen giving testimony to the House Oversight Committee. Cohen had previously lied to Congress. He’s since been sentenced to spend three years in a federal prison.
“The one tiny detail that was new yesterday was the Roger Stone one that he sat in on a speaker phone call where Stone said, ‘Emails are coming in a couple of days and he was right.”
Marcy Wheeler, a Grand Rapids-based independent journalist specializing in national security writing for emptywheel.net has been following legal aspects of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s meddling into the 2016 Presidential Election, she compares notes with Cohen.
“In July of 2016, days before the Democratic Convention, I was in Mr. Trump’s office when his secretary announced that Roger Stone was on the phone. Mr. Trump put Mr. Stone on the speaker phone. Mr. Stone told Mr. Trump that he had just gotten off the phone with Julian Assange and that Mr. Assange told Mr. Stone that within a couple of days there would be a massive dump of emails that would damage Hilary Clinton’s campaign. Mr. Trump responded by stating to the effect, ‘Wouldn’t that be great.’”
Wheeler explains the significance of the testimony.
“Mueller in Stone’s indictment had phrased that as, ‘Stone told senior campaign officials in June and July details about what were coming with regards to the emails.’ He didn’t tell us that one of those senior campaign officials was the candidate, which makes it a little more interesting. Trumps response, ‘Let’s hope that happens,’ also interesting. Cohen suggested that Mueller has some corroboration for that, also interesting. We still don’t know who all Stone was using as a go between with WikiLeaks and I suspect that will come out in Stone’s prosecution which may take six months before it gets started.”
Patrick Center, WGVU News.