A pair of conservative Republican lawmakers on Thursday accused disgraced former Donald Trump lawyer Michael cohen of committing perjury in a House hearing a day earlier, and asked the U.S. Justice Department to investigate.
In a six-page letter, Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan and North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows wrote to Attorney General William Barr that Cohen 'committed perjury and knowingly made false statements during his testimony.'
Cohen said Wednesday in a House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing that he 'never defrauded any bank' while he was funding a hush-money payment to porn actress Stormy Daniels in 2016.
He claimed that his testimony against President Trump wasn't motivated by revenge for excluding him from top White House jobs, saying he never wanted one.
In a pre-hearing disclosure form that Cohen signed, he declared that he had no commercial contracts for money 'originating with a foreign government.'
And he testified Wednesday that an employee of a technology firm created a 'Women For Cohen' Twitter account for him, and that 'I didn't actually set that up.'
Jordan and Meadows, both leaders within the conservative House Freedom Caucus, told Barr that all of those statements were lies.
Republican Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio (left) and Mark Meadows of North Carolina (right) referred Michael Cohen for a new perjury prosecution, telling the Justice Department that Donald Trump's disgraced former lawyer lied to them in a hearing a day earlier
Cohen, who will go to prison in May for three years, said Wednesday that he never defrauded banks, didn't angle for a job in Trump's White House and had no business contracts the earned him money which 'originated with foreign governments'
Attorney General William Barr could take action to file charges against Cohen for perjury; Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress in 2018 already
Cohen will begin a three-year prison term in May for a list of federal crimes including tax evasion and lying to Congress.
Most of the Republican committee members on Wednesday railed against the Democratic majority for calling as a witness a man who pleaded guilty to lying to Congress once already.
In Thursday's letter, Jordan and Meadows asserted that '[s]everal times during his testimony, Mr. Cohen denied committing various fraudulent acts that he has pleaded guilty to in federal court.'
Cohen's contention that 'I never defrauded any bank' raised a red flag. One of his guilty pleas was to a charge of making false statements to a banking institution, which prosecutors referred to as 'bank fraud' in his plea agreement.
And Republicans saw as 'false' his signed statement that he had no financial links with foreign governments.
'Mr. Cohen testified during the hearing that he had entered into contractual agreements during 20 17 with at least two foreign entities owned in part by foreign governments,' Jordan and Meaodws wrote Thursday.
They cited BTA Bank of Kazakhstan, which is majority-owned by Nursultan Äbishuly Nazarbayev's strongman government, and Korea Aerospace Industries of South Korea.
Cohen said Wednesday that he was telling the truth when he signed a pre-hearing form saying that none of his income originated with foreign governments
Cohen insisted Wednesday that he never wanted to work in Trump's White House, barking denials at Jordan, the committee's ranking Republican, and drawing howls of protest from people who knew him during the post-election transition period in late 2016.
After Cohen blasted Trump as a 'racist' and a 'conman,' Jordan berated him, asking the disgraced former attorney how long he worked in the White House.
'I never worked in the White House,' Cohen
