President Trump’s former personal lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen will testify before three congressional committees before he enters jail next month.
Cohen is expected to appear before closed sessions of the House and Senate intelligence committees and in a public session of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
Cohen, who was sentenced to three years in prison in December, canceled a planned appearance today before the Senate Intelligence Committee after undergoing surgery on his shoulder.
His decision not to appear drew an angry response from Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr after Cohen was seen dining out in New York in recent days with his wife and some friends.
“He’s already stiffed us on being in Washington today because of an illness,” CNBC quoted Burr as saying on Tuesday. “You have … on Twitter, a reporter reported he was having a wild night Saturday night eating out in New York with five buddies. Didn’t seem to have any physical limitations. And he was out with his wife last night.”
In December, Cohen was sentenced by a federal judge to three years in prison for crimes including orchestrating hush payments to women who said they had affairs with Trump, in violation of campaign laws before the 2016 election. Trump denies having had sex with either of the women.
Cohen’s testimony to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Intelligence Committee will be closed.
The date of the Senate panel appearance has not been made public.
Davis declined today to release it, and a panel spokeswoman said the committee has a policy of not commenting on potential witness appearances.
Cohen is scheduled to testify Feb. 28 before the House panel.
Cohen has been sentenced to three years in federal prison for a series of crimes he committed while working for Trump.
The sentence stems from eight federal charges he pleaded guilty to in August, including campaign finance violations tied to a scheme to pay off women alleging affairs with Trump in order to prevent damaging information from surfacing during the 2016 presidential campaign.
His sentence also entails two months to be served concurrently for a single charge of lying to Congress about plans to build a Trump property in Moscow, which Cohen pleaded guilty to in late November as part of a deal with special counsel Robert Mueller.
That deal guarantees his cooperation in Mueller’s ongoing Russia investigation.
Cohen will be allowed to voluntarily surrender to federal authorities on March 6.
He has also been ordered to pay $1.4 million in restitution, forfeiture of $500,000 and a fine of $50,000.
Cohen, at his sentencing, said Trump was right to call him weak because it was his “duty” to cover up Trump’s “dirty deeds.”