Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez line of questioning to Michael Cohen on today led to Donald Trump’s long time personal attorney and fixer to urge her to go after the president’s tax returns.
Cohen also offered a list of people at the Trump Organization that the House Oversight and Reform Committee could subpoena for more information.
Cohen, in response to Ocasio-Cortez’s inquires, revealed additional details on how Trump provided insurance companies with financials that exaggerated his assets and wealth but wanted to reduce his real estate taxes – and if the president lied on insurance and IRS forms to make this happen, that would be fraud.
Ocasio-Cortez kept her questions to Cohen short and to the point – unlike many of her colleagues on the House Oversight and Reform Committee who used their questioning time to make political points.
The freshman Democrat kept her focus on the money and whether there could have been financial fraud on the part of the president.
She inquired if the president was interested in lowering his real estate taxes.
When Cohen replied in the affirmative, she asked how that would be done.
‘You deflate the value of the asset and then you put in a request to the tax department for a destruction,’ he said in response.
She stayed on financial issues for nearly all her questioning as she laid the groundwork for the committee to continue and expand its investigation of the president’s business empire.
‘Where would the committee find more information on this? Do you think we need to review his financial statements and tax returns in order to compare them?,’ she asked.
‘Yes, and you would find it at the Trump Org,’ Cohen told her.
She also set up the possibility of the committee using its subpoena power to obtain the president’s tax records and other financial documents.
Ocasio-Cortez inquired if it ‘would it help for the committee to obtain federal and state returns from the president and his company to address that?’
‘I believe so,’ Cohen told her in her four minutes of questioning.
She also got Cohen, who was known as the president’s fixer, to reveal the names of additional people who knew about Trump’s business dealings, a list of names that could find themselves the subject of a Congressional subpoena.
Those names were Allen Weisselberg, the chief financial officer of the Trump Organization; Ron Lieberman, an executive vice president with the Trump Organization; and Matthew Calamari, the director of corporate security for the president.
‘Yeah we probably will,’ Oversight chairman Rep. Elijah Cummings said when asked after the hearing if there will be additional subpoenas.
He did sound a note of caution. ‘There’s certain areas we have to be careful with because special counsel and the Southern District of New York said there are certain areas they are getting into.’
He added: ‘I think there are still a number of shoes to drop.’