Former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski tweeted that Michael Cohen “never had a role in the 2016 Trump Campaign,” adding: “He is literally just making up more lies. #FullofCrap!” | Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images White House Trump allies assault 'worthless' Cohen testimony as president stays quiet With Trump halfway around the world, his family members, aides and supporters collectively blasted the president's ex-personal lawyer.

With President Donald Trump and his senior aides halfway around the world, the White House’s political allies held down the home front against a blistering attack back in Washington.

The president’s sons, advisers and friends collectively unloaded on Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen as he delivered explosive testimony before Congress on a day when Trump was in Vietnam for high-stakes nuclear diplomacy with North Korea’s dictator.


Filling a void that might normally be filled by a tweeting Trump — who remained silent and was likely sleeping for at least some of the hours-long hearing — they insisted that Cohen is a liar who can’t be trusted, a ladder climber who wanted his moment in the spotlight and a poser who exaggerated his importance.

“Michael Cohen is a felon, a disbarred lawyer, and a convicted perjurer, who lied to both Congress and the Special Counsel in a ‘deliberate and premeditated’ fashion according to the Special Counsel’s Office,” Trump campaign spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany said. “Now he offers what he says is evidence, but the only support for that is his own testimony, which has proven before to be worthless.”

“This sounds like a breakup letter... and I’m keeping your sweatshirt,” Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr. who live-tweeted much of the hearing, wrote of Cohen’s testimony.

White House aides, Trump’s lawyers and others loyal to the president were glued to the hearing throughout the day. They privately expressed deep frustration that the spectacle was overshadowing Trump’s summit with Kim Jong Un.

Trump’s only public comments about Cohen’s testimony came before the hearing, in an overnight tweet from Hanoi in which he accused Cohen of lying to get a reduced prison sentence. Since then, the White House has been unusually silent in the face of Cohen’s charges, which range from allegedly criminal hush money payments to charges that the president is a racist and a con man.

Trump finally weighed in shortly before leaving Hanoi after failing to strike a deal with Kim over denuclearization.

"I tried to watch as much as I could," Trump said at a press conference. "I wasn't able to watch too much, because I've been a little bit busy, but I think having a fake hearing like that and having it in the middle of this very important summit is really a terrible thing."

"He lied a lot, but it was very interesting because he didn't lie about one thing, [he] said no collusion with the Russian hoax," Trump added. "And I said, 'I wonder why he didn't just lie about that, too, like everything else.'"

For Donald Trump, Jr., and others in Trump’s world, the disdain for Cohen runs deep. Cohen, in his testimony, named names, betraying the confidence of many in the president’s inner circle.

Cohen alleged that he believes Donald Trump, Jr., told his father about the 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Russian agents, that Roger Stone alerted Trump about WikiLeaks’ pending release of hacked Democratic emails, and that he spoke with former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski about the possibility that Trump would visit Russia during the presidential campaign.

It remains to be seen whether the attacks on Cohen will resonate with a public polls show to be skeptical that the president is truthful. Throughout the hearing, Cohen repeatedly acknowledged that he has lied in the past, but insisted he has turned over a new leaf. In some cases, including his allegation that Trump directed him to pay hush money to the adult film actress known as Stormy Daniels, he provided documents to back up his assertions.

In recent court filings, the office of special counsel Robert Mueller, with whom Cohen has extensively cooperated, gave a favorable assessment of his credibility, saying that Trump’s former fixer had provided investigators with “relevant and truthful” information that had been corroborated from other sources.

Trump’s defenders amplified attacks on Cohen from Republicans on the House Oversight Committee, who bashed the New Yorker for hiring former Clinton White House lawyer Lanny Davis.

“So Hillary Clinton’s close friend helped convicted liar Michael Cohen write a vicious attack on the man he took money from for 11 years and we are supposed to be impressed?” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich asked on Twitter. Donald Trump Jr. promptly retweeted the comment.

When Cohen claimed during Wednesday’s hearing that he never wanted a job in the Trump administration after the 2016 election — an assertion that conflicts with investigators’ allegations and journalists’ reporting — Trump’s allies pounced.

“Michael was lobbying EVERYONE to be ‘Chief of Staff,’” Trump Jr.’s younger brother, Eric, wrote on Twitter. “It was the biggest joke in the campaign and around the office. Did he just perjure himself again?”

Lewandowski, Trump’s former campaign manager, also made the case that Cohen was less influential than he presents himself.

“Let’s be clear,” he tweeted, charging that Cohen “never had a role in the 2016 Trump Campaign,” adding: “He is literally just making up more lies. #FullofCrap!”

Multiple allies of the president also touted Trump defender Rep. Mark Meadows’ decision to refer Cohen for criminal investigation for allegedly violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act for, according to Meadows, “illegally lobbying on behalf of foreign entities without registering.”

“Cohen talks about ‘blind loyalty.’ His real blind loyalty? It's to the almighty dollar,” the North Carolina Republican wrote on Twitter.

Some people close to the White House were taken aback by how personal Cohen’s testimony was. “He is a racist. He is a con man. He is a cheat,” Cohen said at one point.

Later, when he alleged that Trump lied about how he avoided serving in the Vietnam War, Cohen looked directly into the camera, appearing to address Trump personally. “I find it ironic, Mr. President, that you are in Vietnam right now,” he said.

But Republicans had a strategy for countering the racism charges. Meadows invited Lynne Patton, a black official at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, to attend the hearing, prompting Democrats to accuse Meadows of using her as a prop.

“I am here in support of @POTUS and in support of the truth,” tweeted Patton, who stood behind Meadows during the hearing. “And the truth is that it doesn’t take you 15 years to call someone a racist. Unless they’re not one.”