“We don’t expect individuals who come behind closed doors to publicly go and tell,” Mr. Burr said, trailing off.

Mr. Warner cut in, concluding the thought: “their side of the story only.”

Mr. Cohen’s opening statement expressed frustration at how a swirl of investigations and news media reports had characterized him and others close to the president. Critics rushed to presume guilt, Mr. Cohen said, had overtaken the facts, smeared supporters of the president — like him — and diverted attention from a pressing national security threat: Russia’s meddling in United States elections.

Mr. Cohen turned over a trove of documents to investigators late last month in advance of the interview, as well as an eight-page letter rebutting point by point a dossier accusing him of having deep ties to Russian officials.

Mr. Cohen reiterated many of those points, albeit in abbreviated form, in the remarks he submitted on Tuesday, saying that he had never engaged with or been paid by any Russian agents or anyone else to interfere with the election, to hack an organization or to spread false information to influence the campaign.

The dossier, a salacious 35-page document compiled by a retired British spy alleging that Mr. Trump and his campaign conspired with Russia during the election, portrays Mr. Cohen as one of the effort’s central figures. In one portion, it says that he met secretly in Prague with a Russian official during the summer of 2016.

Mr. Cohen said that in fact he had never been to Prague and, at the time of his alleged visit, was making a college visit to Los Angeles with his son.