The Senate Intelligence Committee recently “re-engaged” Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney, after it was reported that Cohen might have known about a controversial meeting between Trump campaign officials and Russians at Trump Tower in 2016, the committee’s chairman announced on Tuesday. “Mr. Cohen had testified before the committee that he was not aware of any meeting prior to this disclosure in the press last summer,” Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), the chairman of the intelligence panel, told reporters. Burr said the committee reached out to Cohen’s legal team to ask if Cohen stood by those claims. “They responded that he did stand by his testimony,” Burr added. CNN reported last month that Cohen had claimed that Trump knew about the June 2016 meeting in advance, despite the president’s statements to the contrary. Burr said the intelligence committee has “no insight” about a plea deal that Cohen reached with prosecutors in New York on Tuesday. The committee hopes that the plea deal “will not preclude him from an appearance” before the Senate panel as it continues to investigate Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, Burr said.
—Andrew Desiderio
