WASHINGTON (CN) – After spending much of the day telling lawmakers that President Donald Trump knew about attempts to hack Democratic Party emails and hush-money payments during the 2016 campaign, his prison-bound former personal attorney Michael Cohen closed out testimony before a House committee Wednesday by saying his loyalty to the president cost him everything.
“My family’s happiness, my friendships, my law license, my honor, my reputation and my freedom,” Cohen said of the things he’s lost. “I will not sit back and say nothing and let him do the same to the country. I fear if he loses the election in 2020, there will never be a peaceful transition of power and this is why I agreed to appear before you today.”
He then asked for an opportunity to address the president directly.
“We honor our veterans even in the rain. You tell the truth even when it doesn’t aggrandize you. You respect the law and enforcement officers, not villainize them,” Cohen said. “You don’t disrespect gold-star families, prisoners of war or other heroes who had the courage to fight for this country. You don’t attack the media or those who say things you don’t like.”
He continued, “You don’t separate families or demonize those who are looking for a better life…. You don’t shut down the government before Christmas and New Year’s just to appease your base.”
Calling the president’s behavior “churlish,” Cohen pleaded to Trump: “It’s simply un-American and it’s not you.”
The day-long hearing before the House Oversight Committee began with fireworks as Cohen openly discussed the hot-button topic that has long dogged the Trump administration: WikiLeaks.
Cohen described how in July 2016, during a visit with Trump, he witnessed a phone call between the would-be president and Roger Stone, Trump’s longtime adviser.
“Mr. Trump knew from Roger Stone in advance of the WikiLeaks drop of emails … Mr. Trump put Mr. Stone on the speakerphone,” Cohen said. “Mr. Stone told Mr. Trump 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.”
The response from the president, Cohen alleges, was enthusiastic.
“Wouldn’t that be great?” Trump allegedly quipped to Cohen.
Stone explicitly told Trump that Assange had a “massive dump of emails that would hurt the Clinton campaign,” Cohen told Representative Peter Welch, D-Vt.
“I don’t know whether he knew or not and I don’t believe he did, what the sum and substance of the dump was going to be, only that there was going to be a dump of emails,” Cohen said.
The conversation Cohen described to lawmakers occurred at an integral moment during the 2016 campaign. It happened just before WikiLeaks dumped the emails and before Trump invited Russia to hack Clinton's emails during a press conference.
Though the president’s onetime attorney has no direct proof that Trump colluded with the Kremlin, he made clear in his testimony that he was suspicious.
It was not until the summer of 2017 when Cohen said something “clicked in my mind.”
“I remember being in the room with Mr. Trump, probably in early June 2016, when something peculiar happened,” he testified.
Cohen says he had been sitting down with the would-be president when Donald Trump Jr. strolled behind his father’s desk, leaned over and in hushed tones told his father, “The meeting is all set,” an apparent reference to the infamous Trump Tower meeting in June 2016 with representatives from Russia.