Michael Cohen Congressional Testimony Is Postponed

Michael Cohen, the former personal attorney for President Trump, has postponed his planned testimony before a congressional committee, which had been scheduled for February 7. Cohen cited threats against himself and his family by the president and his attorney Rudy Giuliani as the reason for the postponement, saying that he needed to put his family first.

According to the New York Times, Cohen has indefinitely postponed his plans to testify before the House Oversight Committee. The testimony had been announced earlier this month.

“By advice of counsel, Mr. Cohen’s appearance will be postponed to a later date,” Lanny Davis, Cohen’s attorney, said in the statement. “Mr. Cohen wishes to thank Chairman Cummings for allowing him to appear before the House Oversight Committee and looks forward to testifying at the appropriate time.”

Cohen, who spent many years as Trump’s personal attorney, broke with the president in 2018 and began cooperating with both special counsel Robert Mueller and other federal prosecutors, who are looking into Russian interference of the 2016 presidential election as well as other wrongdoing by the president and his associates.

Trump and Giuliani, in recent weeks, have threatened to investigate Cohen’s father-in-law, per the Hill.

Michael Cohen, after his office was raided in April of 2018, pleaded guilty to tax evasion and other crimes, while also admitting in court that he made payments to two women with whom Trump has allegedly had affairs, and did so supposedly at the president’s direction. Last November, Cohen made a second guilty plea to charges that he lied to Congress in 2017 testimony. The first guilty plea was to charges brought by prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, and the second was to the special counsel.

BREAKING: Michael Cohen postpones his House testimony, citing "ongoing threats against his family" https://t.co/2U1iBgWIOe pic.twitter.com/mdUZYMHhyM

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Last week’s controversial Buzzfeed report cited by Inquisitr, which was disputed in a rare public statement from the special counsel’s office, hinged on the question of whether Mueller’s team had acquired evidence that Cohen had been directed to lie to Congress by President Trump about how late in 2016 that Trump was in active talks to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.

Cohen had announced on January 10, per CNN, that he planned to testify before the House Oversight Committee in February.

“I look forward to having the privilege of being afforded a platform with which to give a full and credible account of the events which have transpired,” Cohen said in a statement at the time. Mueller had agreed at the time to clear the testimony, committee chairman Rep. Elijah Cummings said at the time.

Cohen is scheduled to begin a three-year prison sentence, as a result of the guilty pleas, later this year.