{"id":33410,"date":"2019-02-27T09:22:16","date_gmt":"2019-02-27T09:22:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=33410"},"modified":"2019-02-27T09:22:16","modified_gmt":"2019-02-27T09:22:16","slug":"trump-knew-of-clinton-email-leak-cohen-to-say-in-his-testimony","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=33410","title":{"rendered":"Trump knew of Clinton email leak, Cohen to say in his testimony"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"body-200771816342556199\" readability=\"118.513107305\">\n<p class=\"speakable\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/topics\/country\/united-states.html\">US<\/a> President <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/topics\/people\/donald-trump.html\">Donald Trump<\/a>&#8216;s\u00a0ex-<span>lawyer and fixer\u00a0<span>Michael Cohen\u00a0<\/span><\/span>plans to accuse the <span>former\u00a0<\/span>of being &#8220;a racist&#8221;, &#8220;a conman&#8221; and &#8220;a cheat&#8221; who committed &#8220;illicit acts&#8221; before Congress on Wednesday, according to a draft testimony (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/f\/?id=00000169-2d31-dc75-affd-bfb99a790001\" target=\"_blank\">PDF<\/a>) released by US news outlets.<\/p>\n<p class=\"speakable\">Cohen, who worked for Trump from 2006 until 2018 in roles including personal lawyer, co-president of Trump Entertainment and deputy finance chairman of the Republican National Committee, will state in the testimony that Trump committed a variety of possible crimes, including making<a href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/news\/2018\/12\/trump-knew-hush-money-payments-wrong-lawyer-cohen-181214112709196.html\">\u00a0hush payments<\/a>\u00a0to aid his campaign and tax fraud.<\/p>\n<p class=\"speakable\">The former lawyer claims that Trump asked if he &#8220;could name a country run by a black person that wasn&#8217;t a &#8216;s******'&#8221;, during former President Barack Obama&#8217;s term.<\/p>\n<p>Cohen also claims Trump was told by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/news\/2019\/01\/trump-ally-roger-stone-pleads-guilty-russia-probe-charges-190129182327962.html\">Roger Stone<\/a>, a longtime Republican political consultant, that WikiLeaks was in possession of emails that &#8220;would damage Hillary Clinton&#8217;s campaign&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Trump contested Clinton in the 2016 presidential campaign, which saw a large trove of her emails leaked, allegedly obtained by a hacker, through WikiLeaks.<\/p>\n<p>Stone is currently accused of seven crimes in relation to Special Counsel Robert Mueller&#8217;s investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia in the 2016 election. These counts include obstruction of justice, making false statements and witness tampering.<\/p>\n<p>Stone denies the allegations, which he calls politically motivated.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Guilty plea <\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Cohen <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/news\/2018\/11\/trump-lawyer-michael-cohen-pleads-guilty-lying-congress-181129143215325.html\">pleaded guilty<\/a> to charges related to the Mueller investigation in August, including tax fraud, bank fraud and eight counts of campaign finance violations, which he claims he committed at Trump&#8217;s direction.<\/p>\n<p>These include a hush payment to adult film star Stephanie Clifford, better known as Stormy Daniels, to keep her from speaking about an alleged affair with Trump during the 2016 election cycle.<\/p>\n<p>According to the prepared testimony, Cohen plans to produce a copy of a $35,000 cheque &#8220;that President Trump personally signed from his personal bank account on August 1, 2017 &#8211; when he was President of the United States &#8211; pursuant to the cover-up, which was the basis of my guilty plea&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p><span>Rudy Giuliani, Trump&#8217;s current lawyer and former mayor of New York City, has called Cohen&#8217;s prepared testimony &#8220;pathetic&#8221; in a text message to the Washington Post.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\" readability=\"5.65625\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Just in: Rudy Giuliani calls Cohen testimony \u201cpathetic\u201d in text message to Washington Post and says, \u201cIf you believe him you are a fool.\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/a0ukJO5Nv5\">pic.twitter.com\/a0ukJO5Nv5<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Philip Rucker (@PhilipRucker) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/PhilipRucker\/status\/1100641956533661697?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">February 27, 2019<\/a>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Cohen says he hopes his testimony before Congress, along with &#8220;my guilty plea, and my work with law enforcement agencies are steps along a path of redemption that will restore faith in me and help this country understand our president better&#8221;.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>US President Donald Trump&#8217;s\u00a0ex-lawyer and fixer\u00a0Michael Cohen\u00a0plans to accuse the former\u00a0of being &#8220;a racist&#8221;, &#8220;a conman&#8221; and &#8220;a cheat&#8221; who committed &#8220;illicit acts&#8221; before Congress on Wednesday, according to a draft testimony (PDF) released by US news outlets. Cohen, who worked for Trump from 2006 until 2018 in roles including personal lawyer, co-president of Trump&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":33411,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33410\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/33411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}