It’s gettin’ real now, folks.
Just hours ahead of Michael Cohen’s public testimony during which Donald Trump’s former lawyer and fixer is set to testify about hush money payments and other financial irregularities tied to the president and his businesses, House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings sent letters to Sheri Dillon and Stefan Passantino.
Who are they, you ask? Well, Sheri is Trump’s long-time tax lawyer and Stefan is the former deputy White House Counsel in charge of compliance and ethics.
Long story short, Cummings wants to depose them.
The prospective interviews, he says, “will address issues related to President Trump’s financial disclosure reporting and the reimbursement of Michael Cohen for payments to silence women alleging affairs before the 2016 election.”
As Corey Lewandowski would say: “Womp, womp.”
Specifically, Cummings wants to know more about the president’s ethics disclosures. Here’s Reuters to ‘splain:
The Cummings letters targets a 92-page ethics disclosure form that Trump filed in May 2018. It said he repaid Cohen in 2017 for a $130,000 payment made weeks before the November 2016 election to porn actress Stephanie Clifford, known as Stormy Daniels, to silence her over an alleged sexual encounter with Trump in 2006.
A June 2017 disclosure filed by Trump did not list a debt owed to Cohen. Some critics of the president have said this omission amounted to filing a false report, a federal crime.
Passantino’s John Hancock is on the 2018 filing – that amounts to a certification that the president was “in compliance with applicable laws and regulations.”
Dillon, you might recall, was the “papers” lady from Trump’s first press conference. You can find the full transcript of that hilarious episode here, but for those who need a visual reminder of the farcical moment when Dillon appeared next to stacks of blank papers in folders which served as stage props, here’s that video:
Passantino – who is now summoned to appear on March 18 – is a legal advisor to the Trump Organization. Dillon is summoned to appear on March 19.
This comes less than two weeks after Cummings told White House Counsel Pat Cipollone that he had evidence to support the contention that “President Trump’s other attorneys – at the White House and in private practice – may have provided false information about [hush money payments] to federal officials.”
Below, find the relevant letters.
