Washington (CNN) President Donald Trump's public silence on Wednesday belied his rising fury over longtime lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen, who the President still insists is not telling the truth after he turned against him and was sentenced to three years in prison.

"He's a liar," the President told associates after the Cohen sentencing, the coverage of which he was carefully watching on television from the residence of the White House.

Trump was intentionally silent during his one public event on Wednesday in the Roosevelt Room as reporters pressed Trump for reaction to Cohen's three-year prison sentence and his allegations implicating Trump in federal crimes.

But privately, Trump assailed Cohen as a "liar," one administration official said.

The President used that word repeatedly in conversations, the official said, echoing what he has repeatedly said in public in recent weeks.

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