Congress

The president’s former lawyer will publicly accuse Donald Trump of a crime over three days of Capitol Hill testimony this week.

Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer, plans to offer up a document to lawmakers that he claims will show the president engaged in criminal conduct related to a hush-money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels, according to a person familiar with his planned congressional testimony.

The person said the document will refute a claim by Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s attorney, that Cohen used a $35,000 a month retainer from Trump as reimbursement for paying off Daniels. Cohen — who will soon report to prison for a three-year sentence tied to a litany of tax fraud and lying charges — is scheduled to appear Wednesday in a public House hearing, and will also testify privately on Tuesday and Thursday before Senate and House investigators.

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During his testimony, Cohen also plans to address a much-discussed BuzzFeed report that the president ordered him to lie to Congress about business dealings in Russia during the campaign. The story initially sparked impeachment speculation, but was later thrown into question when special counsel Robert Mueller’s office took the rare step of issuing a carefully worded denial of certain elements of the piece.

“He’ll explain exactly why he lied and how he came to lie,” said the person familiar with Cohen’s testimony.

More broadly, Cohen will go into personal and character accusations against Trump, saying the president made racist remarks in front of him such as questioning the intelligence of African-Americans, according to the person.

As word of Cohen’s expected damning accounts leaked out Tuesday morning, the White House and Trump supporters began pushing back against the president’s former lawyer, highlighting his criminal record and deceitful history.

“Disgraced felon Michael Cohen is going to prison for lying to Congress and making other false statements,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement that didn’t address Cohen’s specific allegations.

“Sadly, he will go before Congress this week and we can expect more of the same,” she added. “It’s laughable that anyone would take a convicted liar like Cohen at his word, and pathetic to see him given yet another opportunity to spread his lies.”

On Capitol Hill, Trump’s closest allies echoed the sentiment.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) tweeted: “Tomorrow ⁦@OversightDems⁩ will hold their first big hearing. For their first big witness, they will roll out the red carpet for Michael Cohen. … Here’s the problem: Michael Cohen is going to prison in two months for several crimes, including LYING TO CONGRESS.”

Trump’s lawyers did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Perhaps the most attention on Wednesday will center on Cohen’s account of a payment made to Daniels during the 2016 election to buy her silence about an alleged affair. For the first time publicly, Cohen plans to accuse the president of acting criminally in the matter, a charge Trump has long denied.

Cohen pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations for making the pay off. But court documents also implicated Trump in the scheme, saying he was a key player in the plot.

Separately, the person familiar with Cohen’s testimony confirmed a report in The Wall Street Journal that Cohen will accuse Trump of manipulating his finances for business and personal purposes, including inflating and deflating his net worth and avoiding property taxes.

Additionally, the former lawyer plans to discuss tweets from Trump that Cohen said were meant to intimidate him. Cohen was slated to go before the House committee in January, but his legal team delayed the appearance, citing threats against him and his family.

The president tweeted on Dec. 16: “Remember, Michael Cohen only became a “Rat” after the FBI did something which was absolutely unthinkable & unheard of until the Witch Hunt was illegally started. They BROKE INTO AN ATTORNEY’S OFFICE! Why didn’t they break into the DNC to get the Server, or Crooked’s office?”

The person familiar with Cohen’s testimony said Trump’s use of the word “rat” “has a meaning for people who are in prison.”

Special counsel Robert Mueller scored one of the biggest legal wins of his tenure on Tuesday, as a federal appeals court rejected claims that his appointment was unconstitutional.

In a unanimous ruling, a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals turned aside arguments that Mueller wields so much power as a special prosecutor that he should have been nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate.

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The appeals court judges also found no flaw in Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s appointment of Mueller in the wake of the recusal of then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The court said that because the attorney general can repeal the regulations used to appoint Mueller at any time, he remains under the control of a Cabinet official.

“Special Counsel Mueller effectively serves at the pleasure of an Executive Branch officer who was appointed with the advice and consent of the Senate,” Judge Judith Rogers wrote, joined by Judges Sri Srinivasan and Karen Henderson.

Mueller’s office declined to comment on the decision.

The D.C. Circuit challenge was brought by Andrew Miller, an associate of former Trump adviser Roger Stone, who was indicted in January on charges of witness tampering and lying to congressional investigators.

Last year, Mueller’s office demanded that Miller appear before a federal grand jury in Washington probing the Russia matters, but Miller moved to quash the subpoena by citing alleged flaws in Mueller’s appointment. Miller’s challenge was backed by conservatives looking for a vehicle to escalate the legal attack on Mueller’s office.

In addition to arguing that Mueller’s appointment was flawed because he was not confirmed to the post by the Senate, Miller’s attorney Paul Kamenar argued that Rosenstein lacked authority to make the appointment because only the head of the Justice Department at the time — Sessions — could do so.

Before the ruling, Kamenar said he expected to lose before the D.C. Circuit and was eager to take the case to the Supreme Court.

On Tuesday, Kamenar said they are contemplating their next step.

“We are disappointed with the decision and will be considering further legal action, whether before the full court of appeals or the Supreme Court,” he said.

Miller worked as an assistant to Stone, who began saying last spring that he was bracing for an indictment by prosecutors from Mueller’s team.

Stone initially said he expected any charges would relate to his business dealings or tax issues. However, the indictment returned last month showed prosecutors were keenly focused on whether he had advance knowledge of the WikiLeaks election-year release of emails pilfered from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s personal email account.

Stone has denied any contact with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange or of having any privileged information about WikiLeaks’ plans, notwithstanding an August 2016 tweet in which Stone predicted it would soon be “Podesta’s time in the barrel.”

For a time, it appeared prosecutors might be waiting for a ruling on Miller’s protests before proceeding to indict Stone, but they ultimately brought charges without Miller’s testimony.

However, in an interview with POLITICO, Stone said Miller’s duties for him were so menial that the snag in obtaining his testimony could not have done much to stymie Mueller’s investigators.

“I can’t imagine,” Stone said. “Andrew Miller is a house painter. He did not work for me in ’15 or ’16. He came to the convention mostly to make sure I get out of bed in the morning after staying out too late at night.”

The D.C. Circuit’s ruling is the fifth federal court decision in recent months to uphold Mueller’s authority.

Chief Judge Beryl Howell of the U.S. District Court in Washington rejected Miller’s arguments last year, although she wrote that his attorney raised “legitimate questions.”

U.S. District Court Judges Amy Berman Jackson in Washington and T.S. Ellis III in Alexandria, Va., also turned aside somewhat narrower challenges to Mueller in separate criminal cases he brought against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

And another D.C.-based jurist, Judge Dabney Friedrich, rebuffed a similar legal attack on Mueller mounted by a Russian company the special counsel had charged with scheming to use impersonation, fake social media accounts and other deceptive tactics to interfere in the 2016 election, chiefly on behalf of Trump.

That firm, Concord Management and Consulting, endorsed Miller’s appeal and presented arguments against Mueller at the November D.C. Circuit session where Kamenar pressed Miller’s case.

Manafort ultimately elected to plead guilty and waive most of his appeal rights.

Concord still has the right to appeal if it is convicted, but since criminal appeals must generally wait until after a trial and sentence, Miller’s challenge to the grand jury subpoena he received presented a more attractive means to push the issue of Mueller’s legitimacy quickly to the appeals court and on to the Supreme Court.

The fight the D.C. Circuit panel ruled on Tuesday is separate from another grand jury battle that recently traveled to the Supreme Court that also involves Mueller. In the other showdown, a company owned by a foreign government argued it should not have to comply with a grand jury subpoena.

Another D.C. Circuit panel rejected the company’s arguments. Chief Justice John Roberts briefly held off the $50,000-a-day fine the firm faced, but the Supreme Court ultimately turned down the company’s request for emergency relief. The identity of the company and foreign nation involved remain a mystery, but court records made public in recent weeks confirmed a POLITICO report from last year that the prosecutors involved appeared to be from Mueller’s team.

The opinion issued Tuesday was relatively dismissive of Miller’s arguments, but Kamenar said the longer wait for a decision from the D.C. Circuit in the case showed that the challenge had some force.

“The fact that the court took over three months to decide this appeal after oral argument compared to the three days it took in December to decide another challenge to a Mueller subpoena issued to an unnamed foreign corporation, demonstrates that this was a serious and substantial challenge,” Kamenar said.

Rogers, the author of the opinion upholding Mueller’s authority, is an appointee of President Bill Clinton. Henderson was appointed by President George W. Bush. Srinivasan is an appointee of President Barack Obama.

Darren Samuelsohn contributed to this report.