Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) suggested Sunday that the testimony of President Donald Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen was driven by his personal vendetta against his old boss.
“I think any fair-minded person would have to question Mr. Cohen’s checkered past,” the Judiciary Committee senator told CNN’s Jake Tapper during a “State of the Union” appearance. “He’s an angry man, he’s bitter. That much is clear.”
Last week, Cohen testified before the House oversight committee, declaring that the president “is a racist, he is a con man and he is a cheat.” The former attorney expressed regret for helping to conceal his boss’ “illicit acts” including advance knowledge of WikiLeaks’ Democratic National Committee email dump, payouts to women who claimed to have had affairs with Trump, and negotiations with Russia for a Trump Tower in Moscow.
Though Kennedy conceded that he doesn’t feel Cohen is “on-the-pipe crazy,” he called him “a little imbalanced.”
“My personal opinion about Mr. Cohen is that he has an ax to grind.”
However, like other GOP lawmakers who have attempted to undermine Cohen’s credibility, Kennedy neglected to address the fact that Cohen served for more than a year as the Republican National Committee’s deputy finance chair.
Cohen’s trustworthiness aside, he presented seemingly indisputable evidence of one of Trump’s hush money payouts in the form of a check bearing the president’s signature.
Still, Trump has railed against his former attorney as recently as Sunday, slamming his testimony as “hostile,” tweeting that it was “given by a liar to reduce his prison time” and “proved no Collusion!”
Cohen’s lawyer, Lanny Davis, vouched for the credibility of his client on MSNBC Friday, calling the information revealed potentially “game-changing.”
Cohen is set to testify again before the House next Wednesday.
Our 2024 Coverage Needs You
Already contributed? Log in to hide these messages.