Ex-lawyer Cohen: driven to lie by Trump?

Present President Trump's former attorney, Cohen, before Congress for loyalty to him? Or why did Trump ask for him? This latest version includes a US media report that causes a stir.

US Democrats are demanding clarification on a Buzzfeed News report that President Donald Trump has called his longtime lawyer Michael Cohen to lie before the congress.

Democrat Adam Schiff said the charges are the most serious against the president so far. "We will do what is necessary to find out if they are true," the secret service committee president told the House of Representatives. The Democratic MEP Joaquín Castro has put an impeachment procedure into play. The former Democratic Attorney General Eric Holder has commented the same way.

Trump accused Cohen of lying to reduce his term of imprisonment. Even his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani presented Cohen a liar.

White House spokesman Hogan Gridley told the Fox News broadcaster that the "Buzzfeed" plot was "absolutely ridiculous". On repeated requests, he refused to deny the central charge that Trump had ordered Cohen to lie to Congress. One of the interviewers said: "It was not a denial of my question".

Lie confessed

"Buzzfeed" reported that Cohen had told Special Adviser Robert Mueller that Trump had told him to lie to disguise his involvement. The Special Investigator team has learned the order through Trump Trial Witness testimonies, e-mails, text messages and other documents.

The "Buzzfeed" report concerns the planned construction of a Trump Tower in Moscow, which ultimately did not materialize. Cohen admitted in November that he lied to Congress on this subject. He said in court that until about June 2016 he had tried to get a permit from the Russian authorities for the construction project. His efforts continued in the critical phase of Trump's election campaign, during which the entrepreneur emerged as a Republican candidate.

Cohen had declared in court in November that he had lied to Trump for loyalty. He collaborates with the Russian affair with the special investigator Mueller, who investigates whether there have been any collusion between Trump's camp and representatives of Russia in the alleged attempts at Russian presidential elections in the US in 2016 and if Trump with the dismissal of the Head of FBI James Comey has thwarted the judiciary.