From the first words of his opening statement, Jim Jordan, top Republican on the House oversight committee, set the tone for his party’s approach to Michael Cohen: belligerent, dismissive and utterly uninterested in anything Donald Trump’s private lawyer for the past decade had to say.
“Mr Chairman, here we go,” the congressman from Ohio spat out in front of a packed committee chamber, having stripped down to his white shirt and yellow tie to signal he meant business. “Your first big hearing, your first announced witness, Michael Cohen … a guy who is going to prison in two months for lying to Congress.”
Jordan adopted a strategy in Wednesday’s high-profile grilling of Cohen that closely echoed Trump’s own stance towards the multiple investigations that now besiege him: bully your assailant into submission. With a grin on his face, Jordan asked Cohen how long he had worked in the White House, knowing full well that the lawyer never had.
“That’s the point isn’t it, Mr Cohen? You wanted to work at the White House. You didn’t get brought to the dance.”
Jordan proved himself not just to be Trump’s bully-in-chief for the purposes of congressional hearings, he also matched the US president’s affection for conspiracy theories. He accused the Democratic leadership of the oversight committee of taking orders from Lanny Davis, Cohen’s current attorney who is a figure of hatred among rightwing Republicans, having been Bill Clinton’s special counsel…
