‘Be very suspicious of Michael Cohen,’ SC’s Lindsey Graham warns Americans

Sen. Lindsey Graham is urging Americans to be “very suspicious” of Michael Cohen, the longtime attorney for President Donald Trump who is under federal investigation.

“You know, the one thing about Michael Cohen is that, I’ve never seen a lawyer behave this way in my entire life, and I’ve been a lawyer most of my adult life,” South Carolina’s senior U.S. senator said Sunday on Fox News’ “Sunday Futures.”

“When it comes to Michael Cohen, you should be very suspicious of anything he says,” Graham continued. “He’s on the hot seat. He’s looking at going to jail, so people like him are subject to making things up.”

Cohen, the longtime personal attorney for Trump, secretly recorded a conversation with the president months before the 2016 election, during which they talked about buying the rights to the story of a former Playboy model who said she had an affair with the then-candidate, The New York Times reported. The tape, which was released last week by Cohen’s attorney, was one of a dozen audio recordings seized by FBI agents during an April raid on Cohen’s home, office and hotel room, CNN reported.

Graham noted Sunday that Cohen already has testified before Congress about conversations he had with Trump. Cohen is willing to tell special counsel Robert Mueller that Trump knew about a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower between his son, Donald Trump Jr., and Russian aides promising dirt on Hillary Clinton, NBC News reported Thursday.

Cohen previously was on the record saying Trump did not know about that meeting, Graham said.

“This idea that he told Trump about the Russia meeting before it happened is, to us,very much new news,” he said. “So, Mr. Cohen, if you’ve got something new to say, you need to come to Congress and say it under oath.”

When asked by Fox News host Maria Bartiromo if Cohen would testify before Congress again, Graham said he didn’t know but that he is “tired of having President Trump tried in the media.”

“This is the oddest way to communicate with Mueller, to leak a story to NBC News that you got some new information about the Russia meeting regarding President Trump,” he said. “I’ve been a lawyer all my adult life; I’ve never seen that work. That’s a media strategy. ... To every American, if I were you, I would be very suspicious of Michael Cohen right now.”