Cohen’s explosive allegations

Trump dogged by Cohen’s explosive allegations as he meets with Kim

The president is again facing split headlines on an overseas trip, this time over his former lawyer's testimony.

By ELIANA JOHNSON, ANDREW RESTUCCIA and REBECCA MORIN

It was a moment of diplomatic stagecraft months in the making. But it didn’t take long for President Donald Trump’s domestic troubles to get in the way.

As Trump sat alongside the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un, at a luxury hotel here, he was immediately confronted by the explosive allegations that his former longtime lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, planned to deliver to lawmakers in Washington later Wednesday.

“Mr. President, any reaction to Michael Cohen and his testimony?” a reporter asked.

Trump simply shook his head. “Thank you,” he said, dismissing the reporters and photographers gathered before him.

Later Wednesday, the White House announced that it was limiting the number of reporters who would be permitted to attend a portion of Trump’s dinner with Kim “due to the sensitive nature of the meetings.”

As he has worked to turn President Vladimir Putin of Russia and Kim of North Korea from foes into friends, and to rebalance the United States’ relationship with China, scandals at home have repeatedly intruded on Trump, creating dueling headlines and distracting a president who pays inordinate attention to the news coverage of his presidency.

This time was no different.

While the president was dining on grilled cod fish and roasted Wagyu beef medallions alongside Vietnamese leaders earlier Wednesday, Cohen released a copy of his prepared testimony, undercutting the president’s self-styled image as a dealmaker by labeling him a “conman” and a “cheat.”

Cohen, who has cooperated extensively with special counsel Robert Mueller as well as federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, said in written testimony that he had proof of the president’s “illicit” acts. This includes a check Trump purportedly wrote after he became president to reimburse Cohen for a pre-election hush-money payment to the adult-film actress Stormy Daniels, who alleges she had an affair with Trump.

The Cohen drama appeared to grate on some in the White House. “I only hope that they focus on the issues at hand and didn’t fly halfway around the world to ask questions they could have asked here," senior Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway told Fox News on Wednesday morning.

Asked for comment about the Cohen testimony, the White House referred POLITICO to White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders' statement from Tuesday. "It’s laughable that anyone would take a convicted liar like Cohen at his word, and pathetic to see him given yet another opportunity to spread his lies," Sanders said.

The Cohen revelations created another surreal split-screen moment as cable news channels dissected the testimony even as Trump and Kim arrived for the first face-to-face meeting of the summit. The two leaders shook hands in front of North Korean and American flags, with Kim briefly smiling and Trump declaring that he believed the summit would be a “great success.”

Asked by a reporter whether the summit would result in a formal declaration ending the Korean War, Trump said, “We’ll see.” The president repeatedly praised Kim, who has been credibly accused of overseeing mass murders and widespread human rights violations, saying it was an “honor” to be with him.

“Our relationship is a very special relationship,” Trump said later, ahead of a dinner with Kim.

White House aides had hoped the summit would be a transformative event for Trump’s presidency, allowing him to rise above the daily skirmishes of life in a divided Washington as he attempted to move closer to denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula.

But it’s clear the president’s attention is divided.

Just hours before Trump was to have dinner Wednesday evening with the North Korean leader, his mind — and television screens around the world — was flitting between his upcoming negotiations with Kim and Cohen’s latest charges. “Michael Cohen was one of many lawyers who represented me (unfortunately),” Trump tweeted.

“He had other clients also. He was just disbarred by the State Supreme Court for lying & fraud. He did bad things unrelated to Trump. He is lying in order to reduce his prison time. Using Crooked’s lawyer!,” he said, a reference to Lanny Davis, Cohen’s attorney, a longtime confidant of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s who served as special counsel in the Clinton White House.

Moments later, Trump wrote: “All false reporting (guessing) on my intentions with respect to North Korea. Kim Jong Un and I will try very hard to work something out on Denuclearization & then making North Korea an Economic Powerhouse. I believe that China, Russia, Japan & South Korea will be very helpful!”

White House aides had held out hope that Cohen’s testimony would be a dud, but it includes a number of damaging revelations. Among them: a claim that Trump was dishonest about his medical deferment from the Vietnam War.

“Mr. Trump claimed it was because of a bone spur, but when I asked for medical records, he gave me none and said there was no surgery,” Cohen wrote. “He told me not to answer the specific questions by reporters but rather offer simply the fact that he received a medical deferment. He finished the conversation with the following comment. ‘You think I’m stupid, I wasn’t going to Vietnam.’”

It’s hardly the first time unpleasant developments at home have dogged the president overseas.

Trump’s maiden foreign trip, in May 2017, was briefly overshadowed by a Washington Post report that a current White House official had become a “person of interest” in the special counsel’s probe of ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Trump was in the United Kingdom and heading to a meeting with Putin in Helsinki, Finland, last July when the Justice Department announced the indictment of 12 Russian military officials over the hacking of the Democratic National Committee’s email servers during the 2016 election.

During a news conference with Putin that ran over two hours, the president was peppered with questions about Russia’s interference.

And ahead of Trump’s trip to the G-20 in July 2017, The New York Times reported that Donald Trump Jr. had met with a Kremlin-linked lawyer offering dirt on Hillary Clinton several days after Trump became the Republican nominee.

During the flight back to Washington, the president inaccurately said that his son and the Russian lawyer had “primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children” when they met in June 2016. Trump Jr. later said he met with the lawyer because damaging information on Hillary Clinton had been offered.

Whether the back-and-forth with Cohen ends up playing a bigger role in Hanoi remains to be seen as the president tries to broker a regional peace deal.

Trump and Kim held a one-on-one meeting on Wednesday at the Sofitel Legend Metropole Hanoi, followed by a social dinner. Further talks between the leaders will take place on Thursday before the U.S. delegation departs for Washington that night.

Since last year’s summit, top intelligence officials, including the director of national intelligence, Dan Coats, have said that North Korea is unlikely to fully give up its nuclear arsenal. As an inducement, Trump is planning to pitch Kim on a vision of North Korean modernization, according to White House officials, even though legislation that the president signed in 2017 prohibits American companies from investing in the country because of its poor human rights record.

“I think he’ll have a country that will set a lot of records for speed in terms of an economy,” Trump told reporters on Monday before leaving for the summit.

On Wednesday in Hanoi, he held up his host country as a guidepost because of its transformation.

“Vietnam is thriving like few places on earth,” the president tweeted. “North Korea would be the same, and very quickly, if it would denuclearize. The potential is AWESOME, a great opportunity, like almost none other in history, for my friend Kim Jong Un. We will know fairly soon — Very Interesting!”

Earlier Wednesday, Trump met with the Vietnamese president, Nguyen Phu Trong. The two leaders signed a trade deal in which Vietnam agreed to buy more than $20 billion in Boeing jets and other U.S. technology.

But it was Cohen’s upcoming explosive testimony that dominated Washington’s attention, with cable news delivering wall-to-wall coverage of Trump’s former lawyer’s planned remarks. On CNN, for example, panelists and reporters pored over nearly every one of Cohen’s allegations.

“All right,” anchor Alisyn Camerota said. “Get used to that breaking news graphic and sound, because we have it all morning,”