House Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik (R-NY) and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Mike Turner (R-OH) have sent a formal criminal referral of former President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen to Attorney General Merrick Garland. 

“The Biden Justice Department must take off its partisan blinders and investigate disgraced fraudster and disbarred attorney Michael Cohen, a felon previously convicted for lying to Congress, who just admitted to lying again to Congress,” Stefanik said in a statement to Breitbart News. 

In a letter to Garland, Stefanik and Turner emphasize that Cohen, who had previously been convicted of lying to Congress, appears to have perjured himself during testimony before Congress in 2019.

Stefanik Turner Criminal Referral of Michael Cohen by Breitbart News on Scribd

The referral highlights that while testifying in New York Attorney General Letitia James’s (D) civil case against Trump on October 25, Cohen admitted to lying under oath in a February 28, 2019, testimony before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. 

During the February 28, 2019, testimony, Dan Goldman, a then-director of investigations for House Democrats, asked Cohen if Trump directed him or former Trump Organization CEO Allen Weisselberg “to inflate the numbers for his personal statement?”

“I’m sorry. Did he ask me to inflate the numbers? Not that I recall, no,” Cohen said. 

However, on October 25, Cohen “claimed Trump directed him and then-Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg to change the valuation of assets on financial documents in order to reach whatever arbitrary net worth Trump wanted for himself” during his testimony, as Forbes noted. 

Trump counsel Alina Habba asked Cohen if his congressional testimony in 2019 was truthful, and Cohen admitted he lied under oath. The transcript shared in Stefanik and Turner’s letter reads as such: 

MS. HABBA: Mr. Cohen, were you being honest in front of the Permanent Select Committee when you testified on February 28, 2019? 

COHEN: No. 

MS. HABBA: So you lied under oath in February of 2019? Is that your testimony? 

MR. COHEN: Yes.

Stefanik and Turner write that Cohen’s statement “raises significant questions about his testimony before the Committee.”

“That Mr. Cohen was willing to openly and brazenly state at trial that he lied to Congress on this specific issue is startling. His willingness to make such a statement alone should necessitate an investigation,” they wrote.

They concluded the letter by requesting “that the Department investigate whether any of Mr. Cohen’s testimony warrants another charge for the violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1001 or 1621.”