Ex-Trump Staffers Say Cohen Is Lying In Hush-Money Court Testimony

At least two people who worked for former President Donald Trump — either on the campaign trail or in the White House — said Thursday that they believe ex-Trump attorney Michael Cohen lied on the stand.

Both Bryan Lanza and Alyssa Farah Griffin said that Cohen, who has spent the last two days testifying against Trump in his Manhattan hush-money trial, had likely lied under oath when he told the court that he had not wanted to work in the Trump White House.

Lanza, former deputy communications director for the Trump-Pence campaign, told CNN’s Jake Tapper that he had direct knowledge of Cohen’s desire to land a White House gig.

“[A]t least to me, Michael Cohen was pretty adamant that he wanted to be White House counsel. He said everything he was doing was to be White House counsel, he’s always injected himself with the space that I was in, which was the TV space, because Trump cared a lot about it. Just so, I always viewed that he’s always positioning, and he was pretty clear that he wanted to be White House counsel,” he said, joking that he did not want to be called to testify.

Griffin joined Tapper for a later segment, and said that while she had not personally witnessed Cohen saying he wanted to work in the White House, it was something of an open secret.

“I was working for a number of Republican lawmakers at that time, several of whom would go into the administration, including Mick Mulvaney as OMB director, and it was widely known and believed. Now, Michael Cohen never told me firsthand, ‘I’m going into the White House, I want to.’ But it was widely discussed that he was angling for Attorney General or to be White House counsel. That’s, I mean, there’s dozens and dozens of people around Washington who could corroborate that,” she said. “My jaw hit the floor when I heard him denying that.”

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5.16.24 1250 pm ET CNN Political Commentator, Alyssa Farah Griffin @Alyssafarah w/ CNN Anchor @jaketapper
Topic: Griffin's take on Michael Cohen pic.twitter.com/jDc3GkBE33

— Jeff Storobinsky (@jeffstorobinsky) May 16, 2024

Griffin also said that while she wanted to see Trump convicted, she herself could not have convicted him based on Cohen’s testimony.

Despite their assessment of the situation, CNN legal analyst Elie Honig said that Cohen’s testimony was too “wishy-washy” to rise to the level of perjury.