“Name-calling isn’t what we do,” Davis told Cohen. “You are going to be name-calling with facts you can prove. Because Bob Mueller is going to be listening.”
As Cohen studied his anecdotes and memories, he sorted them into three categories that he believed best described Trump: racist, con man, and cheat. In telephone calls and emailed exchanges of drafts, Cohen worked with Davis to structure the opening statement he would deliver before Cummings’s committee. Davis had two requirements for his client: Cohen had to acknowledge his regret and shame over what he had done in service to Trump, and he had to state unequivocally that he was not seeking and would not accept a pardon from the president. Together these two assertions would help address the skepticism many lawmakers felt about Cohen, a convicted felon who previously lied before Congress.
Just before his February 27 testimony, a team that Davis had assembled ran Cohen through a murder board, asking him intentionally vicious questions to steel Cohen for what one member of the team called “the nastiest cross-examination Republicans would give him.” Cohen was uneasy about admitting to a national audience that he was ashamed about his behavior but ultimately agreed with Davis that it wasn’t sufficient to state, “I’m sorry,” or, “I take responsibility.” Those phrases had become almost trite in modern political theater.
The morning of February 27, Cohen stood in the House Oversight Committee’s hearing room, raised his right hand, and swore an oath that his testimony was the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Looking down to read from his prepared statement before a hushed room, Cohen expressed far more than an apology. “I regret the day I said ‘yes’ to Mr. Trump,” he said. “I regret all the help and support I gave him along the way. I am ashamed of my own failings, and I publicly accepted responsibility for them by pleading guilty in the Southern District of New York. I am ashamed of my weakness and misplaced loyalty—of the things I did for Mr. Trump in an effort to protect and promote him. I am ashamed that I chose to take part in concealing Mr. Trump’s illicit acts rather than listening to my own conscience.
“I am ashamed because I know what Mr. Trump is,” Cohen continued. “He is a racist. He is a conman. He is a cheat.”
Cohen laid out a devastating bill of particulars against the president, sharing specific anecdotes and, in some cases, brandishing evidence to support his claims. He presented copies of Trump’s financial statements from 2011 to 2013; a copy of a check Trump wrote from his personal bank account after becoming president to reimburse Cohen for hush-money payments to the adult-film star Stormy Daniels; and copies of letters Cohen wrote at Trump’s direction threatening civil and criminal action against his high school, colleges, and the College Board if they ever released his grades or SAT scores.
Cohen offered testimony that drove at the heart of Mueller’s investigation. He said Trump directed negotiations over the proposed Trump Tower in Moscow, which continued throughout the 2016 campaign, and lied to the public about it. Cohen also alleged that then-candidate Trump knew that Roger Stone had spoken with Julian Assange in advance of WikiLeaks’ release of Democratic National Committee emails.
The most chilling part of Cohen’s testimony, however, was what he said about Trump’s character. Cohen argued that Trump ran for office “to make his brand great, not to make our country great,” and that as president he has become “the worst version of himself.” Cohen described Trump as far more craven, dishonest, and racist in private than he lets on in public. He said Trump “speaks in code, and I understand the code,” as if he were a mob boss giving orders to his henchman.
Cohen said working for Trump was “intoxicating,” adding that he became so “mesmerized” by his boss that he routinely did things that he knew were wrong. And he said his experience should be a cautionary tale for Republican members of Congress. “I did the same thing that you’re doing now for 10 years. I protected Mr. Trump for 10 years,” Cohen said. He added, “People that follow Mr. Trump, as I did blindly, are going to suffer the same consequences that I’m suffering.”
Trump’s allies on the panel treated Cohen roughly, just as Davis’s murder board team had prepared him for. “You’re a pathological liar,” the Republican congressman Paul Gosar said. “You don’t know truth from falsehood.”
The well-rehearsed witness didn’t flinch. “Are you referring to me or the president?” Cohen shot back.
“When I ask you a question, I’ll ask for an answer,” Gosar replied, cutting him off.
The Republican congressman Jim Jordan, a fierce Trump defender, sought to portray Cohen as a disgruntled former employee who was left behind in New York when his boss became president. “You wanted to work in the White House,” Jordan said. “You didn’t get brought to the dance.”
“Mr. Jordan, all I wanted was what I got, to be personal attorney to the president,” Cohen replied.
Notably, no Republican on the panel tried to defend Trump by engaging with the substance of Cohen’s testimony. They only attacked Cohen’s credibility as a witness.
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Eighty-three hundred miles away from the fireworks in Cummings’s hearing room, Trump was cozying up to Kim at the luxurious Sofitel Legend Metropole Hanoi hotel. At the very moment he was conducting diplomacy with the world’s most erratic dictator, Trump was being called a con man by his former attorney. At a brief photo opportunity during his one-on-one meeting with Kim, Jonathan Lemire of the Associated Press asked whether he had a response to Cohen’s testimony. Trump bristled, shaking his head and declining to answer.
The White House abruptly banned Lemire and three other U.S. journalists from covering Trump’s dinner with Kim shortly thereafter, where the leaders tried to bond over grilled sirloin and chocolate lava cake. This was an extraordinary act of retaliation by the U.S. government, which had historically upheld the rights of journalists whenever a president traveled overseas, and especially in the presence of autocrats whose countries do not have a free press. Sarah Sanders cited “sensitivities over shouted questions in the previous sprays.” Trump had complained to aides many times before about being embarrassed by the questions reporters ask him in front of other world leaders. Trump had hoped his interactions with Kim would drive news coverage back home, showing him acting as a statesman, just as in Singapore seven months earlier. Instead, television networks aired round-the-clock coverage of Cohen’s testimony.
The next day, February 28, Trump made a play for history when he sat for more formal negotiating sessions with Kim and their delegations. He was so certain that he could broker a nuclear disarmament accord of some kind with the North Korean leader that the White House announced a joint signing ceremony at the summit’s conclusion that afternoon. But there ended up being nothing to sign. A working luncheon for the two leaders was canceled amid a standoff over Kim’s demand that the United States remove economic sanctions against North Korea without a promise to end his nuclear program. The talks were over. “Sometimes you have to walk, and this was just one of those times,” a chastened Trump told reporters before flying home to Washington.