On Jan. 10, Donald Trump attorney Michael Cohen accepted an invitation to testify before the House Oversight Committee. At the time, it was anticipated that Cohen would provide answers to some wide-ranging questions concerning the Trump campaign’s connections to Russia, Trump’s payoffs to silence women with whom he’d allegedly had affairs, and the news that Trump had continued negotiating for a real estate deal in Moscow during the campaign. But as Trump repeated tweets clearly intended as threats against members of Cohen’s family, word came out that Cohen was rethinking whether he should appear before the committee. It was clear in the statements from the U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York that Cohen was facing a larger sentence specifically because he refused to provide details on questions related to his family, so Trump’s attempt to focus attention particularly on Cohen’s father-in-law clearly hit a sore spot.
But CNN is now reporting that Cohen has informed Republicans on the committee that he still intends to testify. Trump’s former personal attorney will still appear as scheduled on Feb. 7 to speak on the record and in public, but now there are some limits to what he is willing to say. According to attorneys for Cohen, he will not talk about “any topic that’s under investigation,” which would seem to include areas under investigation by both the SDNY and the special counsel’s office.
That means that many of the hottest topics, including whether Trump ordered Cohen to lie about the Moscow Project, will be off the table when Cohen appears. The Republicans who received the letter from Cohen’s attorney describe the appearance as Cohen coming just to “share his personal anecdotes” about working for Trump, and have suggested that the testimony is likely to be frustrating and uninformative. And on this one topic, they may be correct. If everything that is under investigation is unavailable for discussion, even those areas of the investigation already known to the public, then Cohen’s testimony would seem to be relegated to things that Donald Trump did that weren’t either criminal or treasonous.
In other words, Cohen may have nothing to say.
The Oversight Committee seems to be a venue that was selected by attorney Lanny Davis, who is acting as a representative for Cohen in public, though not in court. Adam Schiff, the Democratic chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, has asked that Cohen remain on Capitol Hill and answer questions for that committee in a closed-door session following his Oversight appearance. However, it doesn’t seem that Cohen has agreed to comply with that request.
Republicans have already let it be known that they intend to ask Cohen questions specifically on those areas he has stated he cannot discuss. GOP representatives can also be counted on to issue frequent reminders that Cohen has already been convicted of perjury, including lying to Congress. So much of Feb. 7 can be expected to consist of “Well, you convicted liar, why won’t you answer my questions, and why should I trust you if you do?”
The chances that the day is going to generate the kind of popcorn-selling television that originally seemed in the offing appear to be considerably reduced.