Republicans renew push for DOJ to prosecute Michael Cohen’s false testimony to Congress

House Republicans asked the Department of Justice on Wednesday to open an investigation into testimony Michael Cohen gave to Congress in 2019 that they say included at least six lies.

Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) said in a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland that they were reviving their request from five years ago because Cohen is now a star witness in former President Donald Trump‘s hush money trial in New York.

“In light of the reliance on the testimony from this repeated liar, we reiterate our concerns and ask what the Justice Department has done to hold Cohen accountable for his false statements to Congress,” the chairmen wrote.

Cohen, Trump’s ex-attorney, pleaded guilty in 2018 to tax evasion and campaign finance violations. His crimes included taking out a loan under false pretenses in 2016 to pay $130,000 to pornographic film actress Stormy Daniels, who was, at the time, threatening to go public with an allegation that she had an affair with Trump 10 years prior.

While the DOJ declined to prosecute Trump at the time, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, an elected Democrat, has now alleged that Trump was aware of Cohen’s scheme and partook in an effort to conceal the payment to prevent Daniels’s claim from surfacing right before the 2016 election.

Jordan and Comer noted that Bragg’s case is reliant on Cohen’s “testimony and credibility.” Cohen is expected to take the witness stand in the coming weeks.

One of the six examples the chairmen used to illustrate that Cohen committed perjury was how Cohen in February 2019 testified that he “never defrauded any bank,” despite having pleaded guilty the previous year to lying to a bank.

Cohen, who was sentenced to three years in prison for his crimes, also testified during the February 2019 hearing to how his “blind loyalty” to Trump, especially involving Cohen’s decision to pay Daniels, “cost [Cohen] everything.”

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The chairmen said that they found it “even more troubling” that “Cohen’s advisor, Lanny Davis, boasted to Politico that Bragg’s prosecution of President Trump all stemmed from Cohen’s testimony to Congress in 2019.”

“And now, a popularly elected, partisan prosecutor is using this convicted liar to carry out his politically motivated prosecution of a former president,” they wrote.

Cohen also pleaded guilty at the end of 2018 to lying to Congress during a separate hearing with the House Intelligence Committee, but he has never been prosecuted for his February 2019 testimony.