Jordan and Comer urge DOJ to prosecute Michael Cohen for lying to Congress

House Oversight Chairman James Comer, and House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan urged the Justice Department on Wednesday to prosecute former Donald Trump attorney Michael Cohen for allegedly lying to Congress.

Cohen admitted last year to lying under oath when he testified in front of Congress in 2019, by answering "no" when asked if he was truthful in his congressional testimony during Trump's civil fraud trial. 

The pair now accuse Cohen, who is a star witness in the former president's hush money trial, of lying to Congress six times, including when he testified that he did not seek employment with the Trump White House, despite evidence proving that he told friends otherwise.

"Last year, we learned that Cohen separately lied again before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in a 2019 deposition," Comer and Jordan wrote to Attorney General Merrick Garland in a letter. "Cohen’s testimony is now the basis for a politically motivated prosecution of a former president and current declared candidate for that office. In light of the reliance on the testimony from this repeated liar, we reiterate our concerns and ask what the Justice Department has done to hold Cohen accountable for his false statements to Congress." 

Comer and Jordan accused Cohen of denying committing various fraudulent acts, to which he had pleaded guilty in federal court, and of lying when he claimed he had no reportable foreign government contracts, despite entering into two contracts in 2017 with companies that are at least partly owned by foreign governments.

It comes a week after New York GOP Rep. Elise Stefanik and Ohio Republican congressman Mike Turner also encouraged the DOJ to open an investigation into the former Trump attorney.

Cohen has previously pleaded guilty to lying to Congress in 2018, about work he did on a cancelled project to build a Trump Tower in Russia, and to violating campaign finance laws. He was sentenced to three years in prison, but he only spent 13 months in prison, and a year and a half under house arrest, per the Associated Press.