Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer and “fixer” has claimed the president once said black people were “too stupid” to vote for him, and mocked living conditions in an impoverished Chicago neighbourhood.
Referencing the president’s controversial public comments about white supremacists, Michael Cohen said the president’s attitude towards minorities “is even worse” in private.
He said: “He once asked me if I could name a country run by a black person that wasn’t a ‘shithole.’ This was when Barack Obama was president of the United States.
“While we were once driving through a struggling neighbourhood in Chicago, he commented that only black people could live that way.
“And, he told me that black people would never vote for him because they were too stupid.”
Cohen’s testimony is among the most anticipated since the House and Senate – the two chambers of the US government – started investigating the Trump campaign’s Russia ties two years ago, and the White House has already taken steps to attempt to discredit him.
White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said in a statement on Tuesday it was “laughable that anyone would take a convicted liar like Cohen at his word, and pathetic to see him given yet another opportunity to spread his lies”.
Trump echoed this in a pre-emptive tweet sent on Wednesday morning in which he said Cohen is “lying in order to reduce his prison time”.
In the highly-anticipated testimony, Cohen told the US Congress that Trump is a “racist,” a “conman” and a “cheat” who knew in advance about a release of emails by the WikiLeaks website aimed at hurting his 2016 Democratic presidential rival.
He said Trump directed negotiations for a real estate project in Moscow during the White House race even as Trump publicly said he had no business interests in Russia, according to Cohen’s prepared testimony.
The sweeping claims against Trump, from a man who once said he would take a bullet for his boss, come as Special Counsel Robert Mueller appears to be close to completing his investigation into possible collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russian efforts to sway the vote, Reuters reports.
Here’s what else Cohen has claimed in his testimony so far...
- Trump knew ahead of time about a leak of emails that would hurt his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election
- Trump directed negotiations for a real estate project in Moscow, even as he publicly said he had no business interests in Russia while he campaigned for the presidency
- Trump ordered him to pay $130,000 to an adult film actress known as Stormy Daniels to cover up an affair in violation of campaign finance laws, and also told him to lie about it to First Lady Melania Trump.