As Donald Trump's longtime fixer, Michael Cohen made himself into one of the most unsavory characters in the now-president's orbit. And that's saying something. Cohen paid off people Trump wanted to go away, threatened reporters in disgusting terms to try to kill stories, and worked with another Trump Organization executive—Felix Sater, a convicted felon with links to the Russian mob—on a deal for a Trump Tower Moscow while Trump was simultaneously running for president.

Cohen will first testify behind closed doors before a Senate committee on Tuesday. But he's set to speak publicly about much of the above when he appears before the House Committee on Oversight and Reform on Wednesday, and the Wall Street Journal had quite a line in its preview.

Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former lawyer, will for the first time publicly accuse the president of criminal conduct while in office related to a hush-money payment to a porn star.

Now there's a line to read about the sitting president. We all knew that Trump, who already appears as "Individual-1" in a federal indictment drawn up by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, was involved here. Cohen will allege he kept doing related crimes even after he took office. Very legal, and very cool.

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Of course, the possibility of a sustained pattern of financial crimes has always been lurking beneath the surface of the various probes into pretty much every organization Trump has ever run. Trump University was shut down amid allegations of fraud, as Trump agreed to pay its victims $25 million. The Trump Foundation was shut down after it was subject to a suit from the New York state attorney general alleging it was also a scam. The NY AG now wants to ban Trump and his children from running any charity in the state of New York for 10 years. Trump's campaign is under investigation. His inaugural committee is under investigation. His administration is under various investigations.

And The New York Times compiled enough evidence to confidently suggest that "President Trump participated in dubious tax schemes during the 1990s, including instances of outright fraud." Those schemes allowed Trump to receive $413 million in today's dollars from his father, "much of it through tax dodges." It appears Cohen may speak to some of that, in addition to what Trump did with his own money, tomorrow:

Mr. Cohen also will make public some of Mr. Trump’s private financial statements and allege that Mr. Trump at times inflated or deflated his net worth for business and personal purposes, including avoiding paying property taxes...The financial statements were developed by Mr. Trump’s accountant.



The Journal was careful to point out no one on its staff has seen the documents, a preview of the kind of scrutiny Cohen's testimony will justifiably garner. In August of last year, Cohen initially pled guilty to eight counts related to the hush-money payments he says he made to adult film star Stormy Daniels—legal name Stephanie Clifford—on Trump's behalf. One of those was making false statements to a bank. In November, he pled guilty to lying to Congress about the Trump Tower Moscow deal, admitting it was an attempt to downplay any connection between the deal and Trump's simultaneous campaign for president.

Oh, and he'll also reportedly describe the times Trump has "made racist statements" and lied or cheated in business.

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Cohen has an established record of lying to Congress under oath, so he's earned the heat. But, predictably, the House Republicans on the committee are guaranteed to devote almost the entirety of their time to undermining his credibility. The New York Times has that part of the preview:

[Trump's aides] anticipate, though, that Republican allies on the House Committee on Oversight and Reform will aggressively question Mr. Cohen’s credibility, trying to paint him as a liar and accusing him of fabricating stories to help his cause.

That's all well and good, but you would hope that sitting members of Congress would see it as their constitutional obligation as a co-equal branch of government—and as self-regarding patriots who champion the American republic—to spend some of their time trying to get to the bottom of whether the president has committed crimes in office or during his campaign for that office. Don't hold your breath.

Two of the president’s staunchest allies in Congress, Republicans Mark Meadows (L) and Jim Jordan (R), sit on the House Oversight and Reform Committee along with James Corner (C). Tom Williams Getty Images

In the end, the most telling bits may involve the Trump Tower Moscow deal. Cohen will reportedly discuss more than the work, and why and how he deceived Congress to try to protect Trump from the ramifications. The deal is crucial because Cohen and Trumpworld initially claimed it was abandoned before any of the first votes for president were cast at the Iowa caucuses. But we've subsequently learned the deal was alive much of the way through the election, raising the specter that Trump's people were negotiating a massive real-estate deal in Russia—which would require, as everything else does in the Russian oligarchy, the direct approval of Vladimir Putin—while running for control of United States policy towards Russia.

Cohen and his lawyer, Lanny Davis, arrive in the Hart Senate Office Building in Washington, DC on February 26, 2019. MANDEL NGAN Getty Images

That policy includes the series of sanctions the U.S. has levied on the country for its belligerent behavior which directly impact Putin and his oligarch cronies, and which they desperately want to see lifted. It also includes the U.S. stance towards Russia's meddling in Ukraine. During the Republican National Convention—again, while Trump's business associates were allegedly working on the Moscow deal—Trump's campaign manager, Paul Manafort, helped get the party's platform changed to take a softer stance on Russia's role in the Ukraine conflict. Michael Cohen himself reportdly worked with Felix Sater and Paul Manafort on a Ukraine "peace plan" that would have outlined "a way for President Trump to lift sanctions against Russia" after he took office.

Cohen may also speak to a BuzzFeed News report detailing how he'd allegedly told prosecutors in the office of Special Counsel Robert Mueller that Trump had directed him to lie to Congress about the deal. This would constitute suborning perjury on the president's part, but the White House has denied the account. More complicated still, the special counsel's office issued a statement disputing the BuzzFeed report, but in such a way that observers are still debating whether the dispute is on the core substance of its claims—that Cohen told the special counsel Trump told him to lie—or other details of it.

Anyway, we can expect a lively couple of days in Our Nation's Capital—and for the president, in his infinite wisdom, to respond to the proceedings with the kind of strategic patience to which we've all become accustomed.

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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