A senior Democratic senator has accused President Donald Trump of intimidating witnesses, pointing out that he would be prosecuted if he weren’t president. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn) said that Trump’s comments about his former lawyer Michael Cohen were indictable.
Last year, Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison after admitting to a raft of financial crimes, including campaign finance violations. He was also handed a concurrent two month sentence for lying to Congress about negotiations to build a Trump Tower in Russia.
Cohen had been scheduled to testify before Congress on February 7, but has postponed the hearing, saying he and his family had received threats from Trump and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani.
Cohen’s legal adviser, Lanny Davis, said in a statement: “Due to ongoing threats against his family from President Trump and Mr. Giuliani, as recently as this weekend, as well as Mr. Cohen’s continued cooperation with ongoing investigations, by advice of counsel, Mr. Cohen’s appearance will be postponed to a later date,” The Hill reported.
Blumenthal, who was the former attorney-general for Connecticut, said on CNN’s The Situation Room, “these words of intimidation come from the president of the United States with a vast Twitter following. So it’s not only his formal position, it is also in effect his inciting potential danger to Michael Cohen’s father-in-law and to his wife.”
This referred to Trump’s comments that investigators should “look at” Cohen’s father-in-law, Fima Shusterman, who pleaded guilty in the 1990s to tax fraud charges in connection with his New York taxi business, The Hill reported.
