Lying to Senate

Blunt: Lying to Senate panel ‘a big mistake’

By KELSEY TAMBORRINO

Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) on Sunday called lying to the Senate Intelligence Committee “a big mistake," following an admission by President Donald Trump's former personal lawyer that he made false statements to Congress.

"I certainly do think that lying to the Intelligence Committee, that I'm a part of, is a big mistake for whoever does it and creates lots of problems for the committee itself," Blunt told "Fox News Sunday."

Michael Cohen admitted to lying to the House and Senate Intelligence committees last week about the timeline regarding his work during Trump’s presidential campaign on a Russia real estate project. In his sworn statement to Congress, Cohen said that work on the project stopped by January 2016.

Prosecutors allege Cohen worked on the deal until as late as June 2016, by which time Trump was the presumptive Republican nominee for president.

"I'm glad to see the special prosecutor taking that particular crime seriously," Blunt said.

The top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, meanwhile, suggested Sunday that if the president knew that Cohen was lying to Congress, and the Kremlin knew of it, that could have resulted in Vladimir Putin and Russia‘s government having leverage over the president.

"One question has always been why was the president so obsequious to Putin from the beginning of the campaign up to the present day," Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "It may be that it's because the Kremlin has leverage over the president, which is a terrible thing, if true."