Michael Cohen, who was President Trump's personal attorney for over a decade and is facing heavy jail time in the near future, testified before the House oversight committee on Wednesday, February 27 and didn't hold much back when asked about his former boss.
Among all the verbal jabs and accusations he made about the former real estate developer, Cohen made a comment towards the end of his testimony that sounds particularly ominous.
According to the HuffPost, “Given my experience working for Mr. Trump, I fear that if he loses the election in 2020, that there will never be a peaceful transition of power,” said Cohen.
There is already a wide and deep field of people vying for the Democratic Party's nomination in the 2020 presidential election cycle. Among the well-known politicians who have already announced that they're running is Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, Vermont Senator and 2016 candidate Bernie Sanders, and California Senator and former state Attorney General Kamala Harris.
Cohen's opinion is one that has been voiced before
The lawyer is not the only one who fears that Trump may refuse to leave the White House when his time as president is over. Various left-wing political commentators, such as comedian and stand-up satirist Bill Maher and Academy Award-winning filmmaker Michael Moore, have also voiced their concerns about a peaceful transition of power between Trump and whoever the 46th president of the United States will be.
Maher, an outspoken liberal atheist who is the host of Real Time With Bill Maher on HBO, talked about this during a recent segment, along with what he feels would be the difficulty of enforcing a subpoena sent to Trump as part of the Mueller investigation.
While on Maher's show on June 29 of last year, Moore echoed the same sentiment while pleading for Americans to turn out and vote in the upcoming midterm election.
Trump has certainly mused aloud about the prospect of not having to leave the office of president. Early last year, Chinese president Xi Jinping helped remove that country's limit of two terms for each president. When speaking at a Republican party fundraiser at his Mar-a-Lago resort a few weeks later, Trump said, "[Xi]'s now president for life.
President for life. No, he's great. And look, he was able to do that. I think it's great. Maybe we'll have to give that a shot someday."
It is up to interpretation whether president Trump was being serious or if he made that comment at least partly in jest.
Michael Cohen has not been complimentary of his former boss
For years as Trump's personal lawyer as vice president of The Trump Organization, Cohen defended the commander-in-chief to a fault, especially as he mounted his hugely successful presidential campaign in 2016.
These days, however, he has said nary a good word about the leader of the free world.
On Wednesday Cohen admitted to threatening many people on the behalf of Trump. When asked by Rep.
Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) how many times he did so, Cohen said "quite a few times", then admitted that the actual number of people he threatened was well into the hundreds.
Towards the end of his testimony, Cohen said that Trump's habit of lying and his overall behavior “denigrates the office of the president," then displayed what seemed like deep regret.
“My loyalty to Mr. Trump has cost me everything,” Cohen said. “I will not sit back and say nothing and allow him to do the same to the country.”
Cohen was convicted of lying to Congress about being involved in a Trump Tower Moscow deal during the former real estate mogul's 2016 campaign.
