WASHINGTON – Following Michael Cohen’s guilty plea on Thursday for lying to Congress, Rep. Mike Quigley, D-Ill., said Cohen and Roger Stone, an informal Trump campaign advisor, need to testify before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
Cohen pled guilty to making false statements to House and Senate committees in August, 2017 about a Trump Organization pursuit of a real estate deal in Moscow in a two-page letter he sent to the congressional panels.
Cohen, “knowingly and deliberately” made “false representations” lawyers for special counsel Robert Mueller told the court in the plea deal. Mueller’s is investigating “links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump.”
Quigley, a member of the panel told the Sun-Times in a statement, “Cohen’s plea highlights what we’ve known on the House Intelligence Committee for quite some time: several of our witnesses were untruthful in their testimonies.
“Cohen needs to come back in front of (the committee) as does Roger Stone. And in the meantime, Republicans on the Committee should accelerate the release of key transcripts. If they use the next month to continue their efforts of obstruction on behalf of the president, have no doubt that come January, Democrats will release these transcripts and call back vital witnesses to get our investigation back on track,” Quigley said.
The incoming chair of the panel, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., told reporters on Thursday morning that in the wake of Cohen’s guilty plea, “we believe other witnesses were untruthful before our committee. We want to share those transcripts with Mr. Mueller.”
At issue with Stone, a GOP political operative and Trump confidante, is what he knows about the timing and release of WikiLeaks publication of hacked emails from John Podesta and other Democrats during the 2016 presidential campaign.