Two Republican Congressional committee chairs have once again referred former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen to the Justice Department for lying to Congress.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) previously said that Cohen lied to Congress during a February 2019 hearing. He was referred to the Ministry of Justice after he was suspected of having said the same thing.
Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to charges including campaign finance violations, lying to Congress and tax evasion. He was sentenced to three years in prison.
In a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland on Wednesday obtained by Fox News, Comer and Jordan said many of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's ongoing lawsuits against former President Donald Trump It said it was based on Cohen's testimony and called him a “repeated liar.” . ”
In a letter Wednesday, Jordan and Comer accused Garland of “crimes of perjury and knowingly making false statements during testimony” in February 2019 before the House Oversight Committee on Feb. 27, 2019. He reminded him that he had referred Cohen to the Justice Department.
Jordan and Comer said at the time that their members cited “six specific lies told by Mr. Cohen” and asked the Justice Department to take appropriate action.
“Last year, we learned that Mr. Cohen had again lied separately before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in a 2019 deposition,” they wrote. Mr. Cohen appeared to admit that he was dishonest in Mr. Trump's non-jury civil trial, which stemmed from a lawsuit by New York Attorney General Letitia James.
“Mr. Cohen's testimony forms the basis for politically motivated charges against the former president and his current declared candidate for that office,” Jordan and Comer wrote. “Given this repeated reliance on false testimony, we reiterate our concerns and ask what the Department of Justice has done to hold Mr. Cohen accountable for his false statements before Congress.”
During his February 2019 testimony, Cohen “knowingly and intentionally made false statements of material fact that contradicted the record established by the Department of Justice in United States v. Cohen,” they wrote. Mr. Jordan and Mr. Comer also said that Mr. Cohen made statements that contradicted witnesses with direct knowledge of the case.
Jordan and Comer said those lies included denying various fraud charges to which Cohen had pleaded guilty in federal court.
Cohen also said that despite evidence from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York that Mr. Cohen secretly told a friend that he expected he would be given a prominent role, then-President Trump “I never tried to get a job at the White House,” he repeatedly testified. And the title under the new government.”
Jordan and Comer also said that Cohen “did not direct the creation of the Twitter account known as @WomenForCohen, contradicting statements made by the owner of the technology company that created Mr. Cohen's account.” Stated.
It also claims that Cohen lied when he said he had no reportable foreign government contracts, despite signing two contracts in 2017 with companies partially owned by foreign governments. did.
Fox News Digital's Brooke Singman contributed to this update.