Pres. Trump a racist , con-man and a cheat- bid for Presidency was a marketing strategy – says former lawyer

Feb 28, 2019 News

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The latest testimony by Michael Cohen, US President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer, has revealed that the businessman hadn’t expected to win the US Presidential Election in 2016. In fact, Cohen said that Trump was primarily motivated by his desire to make his image more marketable.
Earlier that morning, before his testimony, Trump tweeted “Michael Cohen was one of many lawyers who represented me (unfortunately). He had other clients also. He was just disbarred by the State Supreme Court for lying & fraud. He did bad things unrelated to Trump. He is lying in order to reduce his prison time. Using Crooked’s lawyer!”
His testimony, at the second of three congressional sessions for him this week, is his first public accounting before Congress of his decade of involvement with the president. The House Oversight Committee heard a scathing testimony from Cohen, during which he called Trump a racist, a conman, and a cheat.
“Donald Trump is a man who ran for office to make his brand great, not to make our country great. He had no desire or intention to lead this nation – only to market himself and to build his wealth and power. Mr. Trump would often say, this campaign was going to be the ‘greatest infomercial in political history.’”
Cohen told the Oversight Committee that Trump didn’t even see himself making it past the Republican primaries, let alone, win the election. Nevertheless, Trump won an election with Cohen by his side.
The lawyer testified that he was often directed by the President to lie in order to further his business interests. As a real estate mogul, he said that such actions were considered trivial, but when Trump became President, he saw Trump’s directives as “significant and dangerous”.
Trump, Cohen said, knew about the release of the hacked Democratic National Committee emails ahead of time. The matter in question is a collection of Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails stolen by one or more hackers operating under the pseudonym “Guccifer 2.0” who are alleged to be Russian intelligence agency hackers.
“I was in Mr. Trump’s office when his secretary announced that Roger Stone was on the phone. Mr. Trump put Mr. Stone on the speakerphone. Mr. Stone told Mr. Trump that 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.”
He said that Trump was ecstatic about the leak against Clinton, and that it is only one of many indications of Trump’s unsavoury politics. Another indication pointed out by Cohen is the instance, he said, when Trump asked him to name one country run by a Black person that isn’t a “shithole”.
His racism, Cohen waxed, is much “worse” in private. One time, Cohen said that they were driving through a struggling neighbourhood in Chicago and Trump commented that only black people could live that way. Cohen claimed Trump said that Black people would never vote for him because they’re “stupid”.
Expounding on his contention that Trump is cheat, Cohen said, “It was my experience that Mr. Trump inflated his total assets when it served his purposes, such as trying to be listed among the wealthiest people in
Forbes, and deflated his assets to reduce his real estate taxes.”
Further, he said that Trump directed the Trump Foundation, “which is supposed to be a charitable organization”, to repay a “fake bidder” $60,000 after the individual was instructed to bid that price on a portrait of Trump, so that the bid price for his portrait would be the highest one at the Art Hamptons event.
“Mr. Trump directed me to call business owners, many of whom were small businesses, that were owed money for their services and told them no payment or a reduced payment would be coming. When I advised Mr. Trump of my success, he actually reveled in it.”
Cohen said that Trump had an affair with a porn star and instructed him to pay “hush money” to the woman, so that she would maintain her silence. He provided a copy of the $130,000 wire transfer he had sent, on Trump’s behalf, to the porn star’s attorney during the closing days of his presidential campaign.
Trump also instructed Cohen to use his own personal funds from a Home Equity Line of Credit to avoid any money being traced back to Trump that could negatively impact his campaign, Cohen testified.
“I did that, too – without bothering to consider whether that was improper, much less whether it was the right thing to do or how it would impact me, my family, or the public.”
While Trump was President, Cohen said, he wrote a personal check for the payment of hush money as part of a criminal scheme to violate campaign finance laws.
“When I say conman,” Cohen waxed, Trump instructed him to threaten educational institutions Trump passed through, to never release copies of his transcript to the public, including high school grades and SAT scores. Cohen noted the irony of Trump strongly criticising former US President Barack Obama in 2011 for not releasing his grades to the public.
Cohen said that nothing Trump said ever indicated that he loves America or wants what is best for the country. He said that Trump had shown him, back in 2008, what he claimed was a $10 million IRS tax refund, and that he could not believe “how stupid the government was for giving ‘someone like him’ that much money back”.
Cohen went on to talk about Trump’s lack of respect for the late John McCain, who was prisoner of war in Vietnam, “because he likes people who weren’t captured”. Even through this, Cohen said that he had “handled” negative press articles about Trump’s deferment from the Vietnam draft.
Trump’s claim for not serving in the military was that he had a bone spur, but he hadn’t even provided medical records to Cohen, who was his personal lawyer.
The former Trump lawyer said that he harbours suspicions that Trump and his campaign were directly involved in collusion with Russia, to influence the outcome of the 2016 Presidential Election. He said that there were many incidents that made him suspect Trump colluded with Russia.
“Sometime in the summer of 2017, I read all over the media that there had been a meeting in Trump Tower in June 2016 involving Don Jr. and others from the campaign with Russians, including a representative of the Russian government, and an email setting up the meeting with the subject line, ‘Dirt on Hillary Clinton.’
Cohen said that Trump’s desire to win made it so that Trump would work with just about anyone.
His very testimony yesterday, Cohen warned, is placing his family at risk of personal attacks by the President and his current lawyer. He said that he has never asked for, nor would he accept a pardon from the President.

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