House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff vowed in an interview broadcast on Sunday that he will subpoena Michael Cohen to testify “if necessary,” CBS News reports.
As detailed by a previous Inquisitr report, Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen was sentenced in December to three years in prison.
Cohen was sentenced for four crimes which include hush money payments to two women — adult film actress Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karem McDougal — made on behalf and allegedly at the direction of Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign.
The lawyer is scheduled to testify before the House Oversight Committee next month. In a statement addressed to the panel, Cohen said that he is “looking forward to the privilege of being afforded a platform with which to give a full and credible account of the events which have transpired.”
But House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff is apparently not willing to take any chances.
“We’ve given Michael Cohen a date that we’d like him to come in either voluntarily or, if necessary, by subpoena,” he said on Sunday.
Schiff also touched upon a Buzzfeed News report which alleges that Trump directed Cohen to lie to the United States Congress about plans to build a Trump tower in Moscow, Russia.
Given that Trump is being accused of colluding with the Kremlin to sway the 2016 presidential election in his favor, it comes as no surprise that the story went viral, prompting calls for the impeachment of Donald Trump in the process.
Schiff: Congress will “absolutely” investigate claims raised in BuzzFeed report https://t.co/T6LIIhmbGb pic.twitter.com/nWhEKVgmy3
— The Hill (@thehill) January 21, 2019
Following Robert Mueller office’s decision to reach out to the publication and dispute the report, however, the veracity of the claims made it in it started being questioned.
Still, the report is being written and talked about in the news, and Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani stated on television that he is not writing off the possibility that Donald Trump had talked to Cohen ahead of the lawyer’s Congressional hearing. Giuliani also suggested that it is irrelevant whether Trump talked to Cohen or not.
According to House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, the alleged conversation between Trump and Cohen is “not protected by any kind of a privilege.”
“If anyone was instructing — whether it was the president or other people affiliated with the White House or the Trump Organization — encouraging a witness to lie, we need to know about it,” he said.
Schiff then went on to add that the fact that Donald Trump’s statements about his business dealings with Russia were false, coupled with the fact that Cohen lied to the United States Congress, “contribute to a picture of obstruction of justice.”