Former Trump lawyer, Michael Cohen, testified before the House publicly at the end of February. While promoted as a coming “bombshell,” it quickly fizzled into nothing but petty sniping, even as CNN and their cohorts desperately tried to latch onto anything they could. You can read a breakdown by RedState contributor Elizabeth Vaughn here.

One revealing statement given by Cohen was that he had met with “the party” (in this case the DNC), as well as other Democrat members before testifying.

“Did you or anyone else on your team cooperate with the Democratic Party in preparing for this hearing?” Hice asked Cohen last week. “We’ve spoken to the party,” Cohen replied. He later noted that he’s spoken with the Democratic chairs and their staff on the House Intelligence and Oversight panels, and that Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) in large part convinced him in these meetings to publicly testify.

Well, that sounds totally above board. A witness meeting with a political party prior to his testimony seems like witness tampering to me, but hey, I’m sure they were just a legitimate part of the investigation, right?

This led some Republican House members to request more information about the meetings.

Rep. Michael Turner (R-Ohio) delivered a letter on Wednesday to Cohen as he was testifying a second time before the panel, asking him to answer a series of questions regarding the extent of contact he had with Democrats on the House and Senate Intelligence committees as well as the House Oversight and Reform Committee. “Clearly, there will be questions as to whether or not such contacts, if they occurred, constitute witness tampering, obstruction of justice, or collusion, collaboration, and cooperation between the House Democratic majority, their staff, and you,” he wrote.

The extent of those meetings was a mystery until now but things are beginning to leak out.

Per Foxnews.com, Rep. Adam Schiff, who’s recently decided Robert Mueller can’t be trusted and now wants his own collusion investigation (click here for a breakdown), met with Michael Cohen for TEN hours prior to him testifying before the House. Not only that, these meetings occurred over four trips (paid for with your tax dollars) to New York by Mr. Schiff and his staff. In other words, a lot of effort went into this.

President Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen told House investigators this week that staff for Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., traveled to New York at least four times to meet with him for over 10 hours immediately before last month’s high-profile public testimony, according to two sources familiar with the matter — as Republicans question whether the meetings amounted to coaching a witness. The sources said the sessions covered a slew of topics addressed during the public hearing before the oversight committee — including the National Enquirer’s “Catch and Kill” policy, American Media CEO David Pecker and the alleged undervaluing of President Trump’s assets.

The possible impropriety of this is clear. You may recall the thermonuclear freak out that occurred just days before when a Republican committee member poked at Cohen on Twitter. The media-verse lit up with claims of possible witness tampering and a coming ethics investigation.

Here we have the ranking member of another committee, which Cohen wasn’t even testifying before, holding ten hours of meetings leading up to his public testimony. Given Schiff’s tattered history of falsely claiming evidence of collusion and just generally acting like a partisan snake, the idea that he and his staff didn’t give Cohen any “advice” during these sessions or pressure him on topics simply doesn’t pass muster.

The fact that so much petty sniping and so many verbatim Democratic talking points made it into Cohen’s testimony reeks of collusion between the two. There’s only one reason you meet with a political party and the most partisan members of the House prior to testifying. You do it to coordinate testimony and ensure that all the “points” are hit, which is exactly what Cohen did before the committee.

Republicans need to keep pulling this string. Showing these investigations for what they are is going to be important going forward. For Schiff’s part, he claims he only met with Cohen to “allay his concerns about the President’s threats to him and his family” (narrator: no such threats happened). You can decide whether you believe that or not.

————————————————-

Enjoying the read? Please visit my archive and check out some of my other articles.

Please follow and share on Twitter: @bonchieredstate