That Michael Cohen is proudly declaring he doesn’t want a pardon from federal prison time doesn’t make him the hero he thinks it does.

The only reason anyone would say that, as Cohen did during his embarrassing testimony in front of Congress last week, is that he knew a pardon from President Trump was never in the cards. And that’s what the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.

Cohen’s current attorney, Lanny Davis, confirmed to the Journal that after Cohen’s New York office was raided by the FBI last spring, he directed his then-lawyer Stephen Ryan to consult Trump’s attorneys about a possible pardon, should he face charges.

The report contradicts Cohen’s congressional testimony, wherein he boasted that he “never asked for, nor would I accept, a pardon from Mr. Trump.”

It’s was a dramatic moment in American history only paralleled by George Washington as a child vowing that he could not tell a lie.

Cohen could have stopped at the “I never asked for” and it would have been sufficient, if not truthful. But he had to go the extra mile and express his dedication to imprisonment.

The Journal’s report says that lawyers for Trump all rebuffed Cohen’s initial overture for a pardon, though one of the lawyers, Rudy Giuliani, didn’t completely shut the door on the possibility of it in the future.

Cohen wanted a pardon and when it wasn’t offered, he decided he’d say on national television that he didn’t want it anyway. Davis, his lawyer, said as far back as mid-December in an interview on CBS that Cohen “wouldn't take a pardon from Donald Trump if it was handed to him." Here are other things Cohen will under no circumstance accept from Donald Trump: $1 billion dollars, a chest of diamonds, and a hug.