House intel panel chief asks DOJ to nail Michael Cohen for lie to Congress

WASHINGTON — House Intelligence Committee Chairman Michael Turner is asking Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate Michael Cohen after Donald Trump’s former “fixer” admitted in an ongoing civil fraud trial that he lied to Congress.

Cohen, the 77-year-old ex-president’s onetime lawyer, served a three-year prison term for lying in 2017 to the Senate Intelligence Committee and other crimes — and Turner (R-Ohio) says his freshly admitted untruth dating to 2019 before the House Intelligence Committee may warrant another prosecution.

Cohen testified at Trump’s New York fraud trial on Oct. 25 that “yes” he lied in February 2019 to the House panel — a crime punishable by up to five years in prison — when he said Trump didn’t ask him to inflate his personal financial statements.

Under oath before the committee, Cohen said: “Did he ask me to inflate the numbers? Not that I recall, no” — before testifying in court last month that Trump had done just that.

Cohen testified in the trial, “I was tasked by Mr. Trump to increase the total assets based upon a number that he arbitrarily elected … and my responsibility, along with [then-Trump Organization CFO] Allen Weisselberg, primarily, was to reverse engineer.”

Trump lawyer Alina Habba pressed Cohen on the inconsistency.

“Mr. Cohen, were you being honest in front of the Permanent Select Committee when you testified [in] February … 2019?” Habba asked.

“No,” Cohen said.

“So you lied under oath in February of 2019? Is that your testimony?” Habba asked again.

“Yes,” Cohen replied.

“Mr. Cohen’s testimony at the New York trial is inconsistent with his testimony before the Committee,” Turner wrote in a letter to Garland that was cosigned by Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), chair of the House Republican Conference and a member of the intelligence committee.

“That Mr. Cohen was willing to openly and brazenly state at trial that he lied to Congress on this specific issue is startling.”

“Mr. Cohen’s testimony before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on February 28, 2019, is contradicted by his reported recent testimony on October 25, 2023. Mr. Cohen’s prior conviction for lying to Congress merits a heightened suspicion that he has yet again testified falsely before Congress,” Turner and Stefanik wrote.

“We therefore request that the Department investigate whether any of Mr. Cohen’s testimony warrants another charge for the violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1001 or 1621.”

The Justice Department confirmed receipt of the letter but did not otherwise comment on the request.

Cohen, now 57, told The Post that the matter isn’t as simple as Turner and Stefanik suggest.

“I’m not concerned at all with their request,” the disbarred lawyer said in a phone interview. “They’re mischaracterizing what transpired.”

In a subsequent written statement, Cohen said he “accurately” testified to Congress in 2019 because Trump would typically make his desires known in generalities, not specifics.

“Stefanik and Turner continue to do Donald’s bidding in witness tampering and obstruction of justice,” he wrote. 

“The two members fail to understand the distinction between explicit and implied; which is how the question was asked and accurately responded to. The topic was further clarified several questions thereafter, which is conveniently and intentionally being ignored.”

The intelligence committee transcript from 2019 shows Cohen testified that Trump expressed interest in climbing up the Forbes 400 rich list, which Cohen interpreted as a request to provide the magazine with inflated financial information. 

Cohen bitterly broke with Trump in 2018 and pleaded guilty that year to lying to Congress about a Moscow real estate project as part of a broader set of charges including tax fraud. He served much of his prison term in home confinement due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Trump is the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination and the civil fraud trial is the first major courtroom episode in the campaign, which may also feature four criminal trials of Trump for alleged crimes involving hush money, mishandling of classified documents and attempts to reverse the results of the 2020 election.

It’s rare for public figures to be prosecuted for lying to Congress and some high-profile officials have managed to entirely avoid charges for false testimony.

Those include former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who testified in 2013 that the feds were “not wittingly” mass-collecting data on Americans — before whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed the harvesting of phone and Internet data.

Clapper said at the time he had given the “least untruthful” answer that he could.