Michael Cohen’s Disproven Testimony
Eric Zuesse
Michael Cohen, former attorney and fixer for President Trump, testifies before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Wednesday.
Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen gave false testimony to Congress on Wednesday, February 27th, when he said that Trump had been phoned by Roger Stone in advance of the Wikileaks dump of Hillary Clinton’s emails and that Stone at that time told Trump that Stone had just gotten off the phone with Julian Assange who had just told Stone that there would soon be a big dump by Wikileaks of damaging files from Clinton.
On February 27th, Cohen told Congress:
Mr. Trump knew from Roger Stone in advance about the WikiLeaks drop of emails.
In July 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 speakerphone. 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 Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
Mr. Trump responded by stating to the effect of “wouldn’t that be great.”
However, on that same day, both Wikileaks and Roger Stone said that this didn’t happen. On February 27th, The Hill headlined “WikiLeaks disputes Cohen, says Assange never talked to Stone”, and Rachel Frazin reported that,
WikiLeaks contradicted Michael Cohen’s congressional testimony in a tweet Wednesday, saying that founder Julian Assange never spoke on the phone with Trump adviser Roger Stone.
“WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange has never had a telephone call with Roger Stone,” WikiLeaks tweeted. “WikiLeaks publicly teased its pending publications on Hillary Clinton and published >30k of her emails on 16 March 2016.”
Stone also denied Cohen’s allegation in a text message to The Hill.
“Mr. Cohen’s statement is not true,” Stone said. … Stone … said he has never had direct contact with WikiLeaks, but said he did have a back channel to the group.
Moreover, there’s absolute proof that Wikileaks gave advance warning on 12 June 2016 — the month prior to the incident that Cohen recounted — because Britain’s ITV had headlined on 12 June 2016 “Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, said on Sunday that the journalist organisation is planning to release upcoming leaks in relation to US presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton.”
That report said, “Speaking to Peston on Sunday, Mr Assange said Wikileaks has further information relating to claims circulating since 2015 that Clinton had in the past used her family’s private email server for official communications.”
If Mr. Stone had seen or heard about that Assange interview in June of 2016, he could have known even prior to July 2016 that Wikileaks was soon going to release things from Clinton’s personal computer.
Regarding the truthfulness track-record of Roger Stone, it is not flawless, but regarding the truthfulness track-record of Wikileaks, it is flawless, and Wikileaks said on February 27th that “founder Julian Assange never spoke on the phone with Trump adviser Roger Stone.”
Of course, regarding the truthfulness track-record of Michael Cohen, it’s infamous, and that’s the reason why he was sentenced to prison.
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Trump’s mother called me yesterday and told me all sorts of things about how his potty training had gone all wrong.
The whole story will be appearing in the New York Times on Monday, and the Guardian has been allowed to serialize the details over the next two years… and I seriously think that half of America would believe me if I published that.
We’re really going to have to go back at least 200 years to fix the sickening chaos we are forced to live with today. Perhaps we should start with an aged, retired, President Andrew Jackson’s response when asked what he thought his most significant achievement had been: He replied, “I killed the banks.”
Such men should live forever.
Cohen reported that he heard a phone call from Roger Stone to Trump.
That the content of the call may have been untrue is irrelevant to the issue of whether Cohen was present when such a call was made.
You need some independent evidence that Cohen was lying about his witnessing the call being made and its speakerphone contents being what he claimed.
so either he’s lying under oath (he is about to go to jail for lying to the FBI) or he disproved “russiagate”. Part of the FISA warrant against Carter Page was predicated on a statement (the entire sources of which have since been discredited) that he (Cohen) went to Prague to do bad things for Trumpo on behalf of Manafort and Wikileaks. He completely denies going to the Czech republic at all, ever, so either he perjured himself in front of Congress, or Russiagate is total bollocks. I think both.
The one issue which is guaranteed to crank me up and has done so every time I consider it going back too many years, is the illegal. extra-judicial incarceration of Julian Assange. Yes I know much worse forms of oppression and torture occur every day and they need to be prioritized, but fair go how can we all just blithely shrug and get back to our lives every day knowing that some bloke has been shat upon from a great height for the alleged crime of striving to keep we the humans on this rock, adequately informed of the crimes being committed in our name and, insult to injury, which we are all suborned to pay for. This injustice has gone on too long and even worse appears to be beyond resolution.
There must be a way to bust the bloke out. The best idea I have come up with is for a spontaneous demonstration of a couple of hundred thousand descends upon the Ecuador embassy, Julian comes out, disappears into the crowd and is whisked out of the US federal penitentiary #457813 (established 1942) aka England.
I’d be up for that.
Agreed, UreKismet, it cranks me up all the time too. Recently I heard a commenter say that if the Australian government demanded Julian’s release it would happen. The five-eyes lot are hand-in-glove and USUK wouldn’t refuse a fellow member’s request, especially now that he could be seen to have suffered enough. But it won’t happen unless Australians at home make a BIG fuss, as they did with David Hicks, so that public opinion forces the Australian lapdog government to stand up for their citizen and freedom of the press. In my humble way I have several times contacted my (Australian) MP about Julian and the only response I got was (paraphrase) Julian is free to leave the embassy any time he likes.
So much about Michael Cohen turns out to be screwy at the very least that I’m not even sure that anything about him including his name or his existence is true.
With a CV like his, it’s a wonder he even got a licence in the first place to practise as a lawyer.
Sorry Jan, with a CV like his it’s no wonder he got that licence.
“The walls are closing in……….the walls are closing in……….the walls are closing in……….Trump’s days are numbered……….Trump’s days are numbered……….Trump’s days are numbered……….”
Like when Manafort had secret meetings with Assange at the Ecuador Embassy.
Just because there is no CCTV of this people think it didn’t happen.
I have it on good authority that it did.
Pamela Anderson went to visit Assange twice.
Only it wasn’t Pammy.
The first time, it was Manafort in drag.
The second time, it was Putin in drag.
Mystery solved.
‘when first we practice to deceive’ _ _ _
A dirty trail we do leave.