Michael Cohen will reveal in testimony before Congress this week that he threatened the high schools and colleges President Donald Trump attended, as well as the agency that manages the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), demanding that the institutions not release his grades or scores.
It’s not uncommon for individuals who testify before Congress to submit written copies of their testimony, in addition to the testimony itself, and Cohen is no different. You can read his prepared remarks in their entirety, as published earlier by Politico .
Among other revelations, Cohen notes that as Trump’s “fixer” and lawyer, he threatened the institutions involved in Trump’s academic career to not release his grades or SAT scores.
“I wrote [letters] at Mr. Trump’s direction that threatened his high school, colleges, and the College Board not to release his grades or SAT scores.”
Trump attended Queens’ Kew-Forest School from kindergarten through seventh grade and the New York Military Academy through junior high school and high school. He spent two years at Fordham University in New York before transferring to Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, graduating in 1968 with a degree in economics. He would have taken the SAT at some point during or before 1964.
It remains unclear, as of this writing, what threats Cohen made to those institutions to keep them quiet, but those threats may not have been necessary anyway.
(THREAD) This thread contains the HIGHLIGHTS of Michael Cohen’s opening remarks to the House Oversight Committee. Cohen’s statement may be the most damning public statement ever made about a President of the United States in American history. I hope you will read on and RETWEET. pic.twitter.com/Z4D4vkZP6c
— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) February 27, 2019
It is exceptionally rare for schools in the United States, public or private, to release a current or former student’s grades to anyone other than the student himself (or his parents, if the student is a minor) for any reason, unless that person or institution has a legitimate interest in doing so and has the student’s permission.
Schools may release copies of grades and behavior to a court without a student’s permission. For example, this could happen if the student is required to keep their grades up as part of a legal proceeding. Otherwise, those things are kept private, in accordance with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), a 1974 law which protects students’ educational privacy.
Similarly, the College Board, which manages the SAT, assures students that their scores are kept private, as per FERPA, according to Manhattan Review .
“Unauthorized release of data can be punished by a five-year ban on access to education records for the offending institutions or individuals. More information about FERPA is available from the Family Policy Compliance Office (FPCO) at the U.S. Department of Education.”
As previously reported by The Inquisitr , Cohen will be delivering three days of testimony to Congress this week. He spoke behind closed doors on Tuesday, as he will again on Thursday. On Wednesday, his testimony will take place openly and will be broadcast on TV and the internet.
