Bit of a weird one: Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former personal attorney, is postponing his testimony before a House committee, his lawyer said on Wednesday, citing “ongoing threats against his family” by Trump and Rudy Giuliani.
Lanny Davis, Cohen’s attorney, said in a statement:
The nature of those threats was not immediately clear. Trump had for months been tweeting disparaging remarks about his former confidant, even before it was officially reported that Cohen was cooperating with Robert Mueller’s probe into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia. Last week, though, he appeared to escalate things by referring to Cohen’s father-in-law:
Cohen had been set to testify before the House Oversight Committee on February 7. As a CNN reporter pointed out on Twitter, this means there isn’t much time to reschedule: Cohen has to report to prison on March 6 to begin his three-year sentence for a number of crimes, including illegal campaign contributions and tax evasion.
Guiliani, for his part, has been on a tear of bizarre, often conflicting interviews about Trump’s legal problems. On Sunday, he seemed to contradict himself yet again:
We have reached out to the White House for comment and will update if we hear back.
Update, 2:44 p.m. ET: In a joint statement to HuffPost, Elijah Cummings, House Oversight chair, and Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said:
Update, 2:53 p.m. ET: Speaking with reporters at the White House, Trump responded to Cohen’s allegations, saying his former lawyer has “only been threatened by the truth.”
He also cryptically suggested Cohen was afraid he’d have to talk about “other clients” as well.
This is a developing story.