Cohen returns to Capitol Hill after Trump derides 'fake' hearing
U.S. president says he's 'impressed' former personal lawyer didn't lie about collusion
U.S. President Donald Trump's former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, returned to Capitol Hill in Washington on Thursday to speak behind closed doors with a congressional panel investigating Russia's interference in the 2016 U.S. election.
Cohen did not respond to questions as he arrived for his third and final session in Congress this week. His private testimony before the House intelligence committee was expected to last all day. The panel has been probing Russian election meddling and any collusion with the Trump campaign.
Trump, speaking at a news conference in Vietnam after failing to achieve a peace deal with North Korea's Kim Jong-un, criticized Cohen for lying in testimony to Congress, but found reason to praise him — for not alleging Trump's campaign colluded with Russia in 2016.
"He lied a lot, but it was very interesting because he didn't lie about one thing, he said no collusion with the Russian hoax," Trump said. The president also called the blockbuster hearing back in Washington fake and said it should not have been scheduled during his trip.
"I wonder why he didn't lie about that too like he did about everything else. I was actually impressed that he didn't say, 'well, I think there was collusion for this reason or that'. He didn't say that."
Watch Trump discuss Cohen's testimony:
'A number of other shoes to drop'
In his appearance on Thursday, Cohen is expected to again apologize for lying to Congress in 2017: When he submitted a statement saying efforts to build a Trump Tower in Moscow had ceased by January 2016 when in fact those talks continued until June of that year, after Trump had clinched the Republican presidential nomination.
Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison for that lie and other crimes.
In dramatic public testimony on Wednesday before the House oversight committee, the one-time "fixer" for Trump accused the president of breaking the law while in office, and said for the first time that Trump knew in advance about a WikiLeaks dump of stolen emails that hurt his 2016 election rival Hillary Clinton.
Committee chairman Elijah Cummings, a Democrat, said his panel would further investigate issues raised by Cohen's testimony and may try to get the president's son, Donald Trump Jr., and his former accountant, Allen Weisselberg, to testify.
"I think there are still a number of other shoes to drop," Cummings told reporters after the hearing.
Cohen also testified privately before the Senate intelligence committee on Tuesday.
Democratic House intelligence committee chair Adam Schiff said in a tweet that on Thursday, he planned to dig into the Trump Moscow project, the revelations about WikiLeaks and any White House role in Cohen's prior false statements.
Today Cohen provided the American public with a first-hand account of serious misconduct by Trump & those around him.<br><br>Tomorrow we‘ll examine in depth many of those topics including Trump Tower Moscow, Roger Stone/Wikileaks and any WH role in Cohen’s false statements to Congress.
—@RepAdamSchiffAt Wednesday's hearing, Cohen said Trump never explicitly told him to lie to Congress about the Moscow skyscraper negotiations. But Cohen said he believed he was following implicit directions to minimize their efforts on the tower.
Cohen said he had no direct evidence that Trump or his campaign colluded with Moscow during the election campaign, but that he had suspicions that something untoward had occurred.
Possible collusion is a key theme of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation, which has dogged the president during his first two years in office. Trump has repeatedly denied the allegation, as has the Kremlin.
Trump also criticized the timing of the hearing, saying it should not have been happened while he was on an important trip.
"Having a fake hearing like that and having it in the middle of this very important summit is really a terrible thing. They could have made it two days later or next week," he said.
"But having it during this very important summit is sort of incredible."
Trump has called an investigation into possible collusion between Moscow and his presidential campaign a "witch hunt".