Michael Cohen met with the House Intelligence Committee behind closed doors today, but according to committee members, he still has more questions to answer and will be back again March 6.
Coincidentally, that is the day Cohen was supposed to report to prison to start his 3-year sentence, but a judge granted him two more months of freedom last week.
“We talked about a lot of things,” Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), 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.
CNN:
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff said Cohen's March 6 testimony would be behind closed doors, essentially a continuation of his meeting with the panel Thursday.
Schiff also announced that committee will host an at least partially open hearing March 14 with Felix Sater, the Russian-born onetime business associate of Trump's who worked to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. Schiff said that the committee "is going to try to do as much as we can in the open."
All of this comes in the wake of Cohen's public House Oversight Committee hearing Wednesday during which Democrats drilled down on Cohen's specific allegations of presidential misconduct while Republicans used their time to attack Cohen's credibility.
Republicans took their charges against Cohen a step further Thursday, when Republican Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio and Mark Meadows of North Carolina sent the Justice Department a criminal referral of Cohen for possible prosecution, claiming to have evidence that Cohen committed perjury in his testimony.
Meadows and Jordan, the top Republican on the Oversight Committee, urged the Justice Department to investigate Cohen's statements Wednesday that he did not seek a job in the Trump White House, his denial of committing bank fraud, as well as his assertion that the did not have any reportable contracts with foreign entities.
Democrats on the Oversight Committee have dismissed Republican accusations that Cohen lied. Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland told CNN Thursday morning that the line of questioning from his Republican colleagues was an "irrelevant distraction."
Michael Cohen to go before House Intel again next week (The Hill)
Michael Cohen will return to Congress March 6, Felix Sater to testify March 14 (CNN)