George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley stated on Tuesday that former attorney Michael Cohen may have committed perjury during his testimony on Monday.
Cohen, a former fixer for ex-President Donald Trump, who pleaded guilty in 2018 to charges of lying to Congress and was later accused of perjury by a federal judge, took the stand on Monday. He testified in the case involving a $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels. Turley noted that Cohen’s explanation for secretly recording a phone conversation with then-President-elect Trump was “striking.”
“The one thing about yesterday that was striking, is I thought that Michael Cohen may have committed perjury again,” Turley told “America’s Newsroom” co-host Dana Perino. “In my view, one of his answers just made no sense at all.
“He said that he taped his client, former President Trump, in order to keep David Pecker, the former publisher of the ‘National Enquirer’ honest and make sure he paid. First of all, it made no sense at all why he would do that, Pecker had been in communication with Trump himself, but it didn’t make any sense at all,” Turley added.
“But Cohen seemed to try to find a reason for shattering every professional ethical standard in surreptitiously taping his client,” Turley continued. “And so it was really amazing to hear that answer because I don’t think anyone, certainly I didn’t believe it, that he was taping that to somehow benefit or affect David Pecker.”
Cohen, who received a 36-month sentence for tax evasion in December 2018 and was subsequently disbarred, is a key witness for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. He testified before the grand jury prior to Bragg securing an indictment of Trump on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records on March 30, 2023.
In December, Cohen was accused of submitting fictitious cases generated by Google Bard to a federal judge in an attempt to have his probation ended early. Turley also noted that the recorded phone call played in court on Monday demonstrated that Cohen was acting as Trump’s attorney.
“You know what it sounds like with a lot of these conversations? It sounds a lot like a client being told by a lawyer what they are going to do,” Turley said. “The lawyer is testifying against the client saying, ‘You should send him to jail for doing what I told him to do.’”
