President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen is postponing his plan to testify before Congress in February because of concerns about his family’s safety, according to Cohen’s adviser Lanny Davis.
his Feb. 7 appearance before the House Oversight Committee.
That appearance had been set for a month before Cohen is due to surrended to begin a three-year prison sentence for mulitple crimes, some of which relate to Trump.
A spokesman for committee chairman Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., as well as spokesmen for the White House and Giuliani, had no immediate comment on Cohen’s decision.
Trump as recently as last week had urged people to “watch” Cohen’s father-in-law, Fima Shusterman, who was placed on probation in the mid-1990s after pleading guilty in a case in which he was charged with conspiring to defraud the IRS.
“Mr. Cohen volunteered to testify before the House Oversight Committee on February 7th,” Davis said.
“Due to ongoing threats against his family from President Trump and Mr. Giuliani, as recently as this weekend, as well as Mr. Cohen’s continued cooperation with ongoing investigations, by advice of counsel, Mr. Cohen’s appearance will be postponed to a later date,” Davis said.
“Mr. Cohen wishes to thank Chairman Cummings for allowing him to appear before the House Oversight Committee and looks forward to testifying at the appropriate time. This is a time where Mr. Cohen had to put his family and their safety first.”
A source close to Cohen told NBC News that Cohen’s wife and father-in-law are particularly afraid, and feel directly targeted by Trump. Cohen’s wife Laura was afraid of going to the hearing in person, because of her fear that she was would be attacked.
“The threats are real,” the source says, “Trump knows what he’s doing.”
Cohen, a New York resident, for years served as Trump’s personal lawyer, and once bragged of being willing to take “a bullet” for the president.
But he fell out with Trump in early 2018, after FBI agents raided his office and several residences in New York.
Cohen, 52, pleaded guilty later in the year to financial crimes, campaign finance violations and to lying to Congress. For months before he was sentenced in December, Cohen had cooperated with special counsel Robert Mueller, prosecutors in New York and other authorities who are investigating Trump.
On Jan. 12, Trump, during an interview with Jeanine Pirro on Fox News, blasted Cohen, as he has done on prior occasions.
“Look, I was a client of his,” Trump said. “You’re supposed to have lawyer/client privilege, but it doesn’t matter because if I’m a very honest person, frankly.”
“But he’s on trouble on some loans and fraud and taxi cabs and stuff that I know nothing about. And in order to get his sentence reduced, he says, ‘I have an idea, I’ll give you some information on the president.’ “
Trump then told Pirro that Cohen “should give information maybe on his father-in-law, because that’s the one that people want to look at. 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,” the president said.
from Viral News Reports http://bit.ly/2TauWxY
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