Lanny Davis, Michael Cohen's lawyer, tells Yahoo News the Senate Intelligence Committee would have gotten more information from his client about President Trump's knowledge of the June 9, 2016 Trump Tower meeting had they asked better follow-up questions.
Davis was questioned on the Yahoo News podcast “Skullduggery” about Cohen’s testimony to the Senate intelligence panel last September in which Cohen testified, in a prepared statement: “I never saw anything — not a hint of anything — that demonstrated [President Trump’s] involvement in Russian interference in our election or any form of Russian collusion.”
But Davis, in multiple television appearances this week, gave an apparently conflicting account, suggesting that Cohen has information he is now prepared to tell special counsel Robert Mueller about Trump’s prior knowledge of the hacking.
“Was he telling the truth?” Davis was asked during the “Skullduggery” interview about Cohen’s previous testimony to the Senate.
“He was telling the truth, but there’s a problem in some of the words used there,” Davis replied.
“Those were his words,” it was pointed out to Davis.
Davis then replied that the senators failed to ask the right follow-ups to Cohen’s prepared statement — about Trump’s “level of awareness” of the hacking, seeming to draw a distinction between awareness and “involvement.”
“If he were asked, ‘Were you aware of Mr. Trump’s level of awareness before the hacking illegally done by a foreign government? Were you aware that Mr. Trump might have known and didn’t call the FBI?’ I don’t think you would’ve gotten the answer that you just read. But that question wasn’t asked.”
Davis’s response was significant because Cohen’s previous denials of any knowledge of Russian collusion could expose him to a further felony charge and additional prison time if he now says something else to Mueller.
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But Davis insisted that “when the time comes” for Cohen to tell his new story to Mueller — and the special counsel is able to “digest” it and piece it together with other evidence — “it could be an impeachable offense” on the part of the president.
Davis, who has practically beseeched Mueller this week to call his client as a witness, has steadfastly refused to specify what Cohen would say about Trump’s knowledge of Russian hacking. He also declined to say whether Mueller has even reached out to Cohen yet, despite Davis’s repeated television interviews offering his client’s testimony.
Cohen’s lawyer says senators failed to ask the right ‘follow-up questions’ in collusion probe (Yahoo News)