President Trump’s longtime personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, is expected to provide House lawmakers on Wednesday with a signed check as evidence of the president’s involvement in a hush money scheme during the 2016 campaign.
Multiple news outlets reported that Cohen will show the House Oversight and Reform Committee a signed check from the Trump Organization that was part of a reimbursement he received for paying adult-film star Stormy Daniels $130,000 to keep quiet about an alleged affair with Trump.
CNN aired an image of the check on “New Day.” It bears the president’s signature, and is for $35,000. The check is dated Aug. 1, 2017, at which point Trump had been in office for six months.
{mosads}The check is meant to serve as evidence of Cohen’s expected allegations that the president engaged in criminal conduct while in office, and was directly involved in the scheme to pay off Daniels.
Cohen last year pleaded guilty to campaign finance law violations related to the Daniels payment, and said at the time that the president directed the payment.
Trump has offered a shifting timeline on when he knew of the payment to Daniels, but has denied wrongdoing and insisted the payments did not violate campaign finance laws.
According to prepared testimony obtained by The Hill, Cohen will highlight Trump’s involvement in the arrangement, and allege that the president has a history of making racist remarks.
Cohen will also allege that the president knew ahead of time that Roger Stone, the Republican operative who was an informal adviser to Trump’s presidential campaign, coordinated with WikiLeaks to release a tranche of Democratic National Committee emails during the 2016 election.
Cohen, who worked for years as Trump’s personal attorney and “fixer,” was sentenced late last year to serve three years in prison after he pleaded guilty to campaign finance law violations, bank fraud, tax fraud and lying to Congress about the timing of negotiations for a Trump Tower in Moscow.
Trump, who is in Vietnam meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, sought to distance himself from Cohen in a tweet early Wednesday. The president and his allies attacked Cohen’s credibility in the past.