President Trump noted that his former lawyer Michael Cohen hired Lanny Davis, a longtime associate of Bill and Hillary Clinton, to represent him, asking, “Gee, how did that happen?”
“So interesting that bad lawyer Michael Cohen, who sadly will not be testifying before Congress, is using the lawyer of Crooked Hillary Clinton to represent him – Gee, how did that happen?,” Trump posted on his Twitter account. “Remember July 4th weekend when Crooked went before FBI & wasn’t sworn in, no tape, nothing?”
The tweet comes a day after Cohen, a former fixer for Trump who once said he’d “take a bullet” for his boss, told a House committee that he wanted to postpone his testimony scheduled for next month because of threats from the president and his new lawyer Rudy Giuliani.
“Due to ongoing threats against his family from President Trump and Mr. Giuliani, as recently as this weekend, as well as Mr. Cohen’s continued cooperation with ongoing investigations, by advice of counsel” he will postpone appearing, Davis said in a statement released Wednesday.
“This is a time where Mr. Cohen had to put his family and their safety first,” he added.
In an interview Thursday on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Davis said “family is out of bounds” and urged Congress to censure Trump and investigate Giuliani for their comments about Cohen’s father-in-law, Fima Shusterman.
“The House of Representatives now has an obligation,” he said. “A resolution of censure when the president of the United States indisputably intimidates and obstructs justice to prevent a witness from testifying is an order. So is a federal criminal investigation of Rudy Giuliani for witness tampering.”
He said while the president is immune from being indicted, Giuliani “should be indicted for that crime on the face of what he said on national television.”
Cohen last July hired Davis, who had worked to defend former President Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
Trump and Giuliani, in appearances on several news shows, have suggested without evidence that Shusterman was involved in criminal activity and possibly connected to organized crime.
Shusterman pleaded guilty to income tax fraud in 1993.
Speaking at the White House on Wednesday, Trump said Cohen has “only been threatened by the truth.”
Cohen was expected to appear before the House Oversight Committee on Feb. 7.
He pleaded guilty last November to lying to federal investigators about Trump’s Moscow project and to tax fraud charges and was sentenced to three years in prison.
He must surrender to authorities on March 6.