Last updated on September 26th, 2018 at 12:46 pm
Stormy Daniels‘ lawyer Michael Avenatti isn’t waiting for special counsel Robert Mueller to force Donald Trump to answer questions under oath. Now that the Michael Cohen investigation is essentially over following his stunning guilty pleas, Avenatti plans to force the president to answer questions as soon as possible.
In an interview with MSNBC‘s Ari Melber, the attorney said that his team has a hearing scheduled on Sept. 10 to ask the court to rule on whether Trump and Cohen will be forced to sit down for a deposition.
“We’re going to ask that the stay be lifted and the court rule immediately on our application to depose Michael Cohen and Donald Trump forthwith,” Avenatti said.
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Video:
.@MichaelAvenatti wants Donald Trump and Michael Cohen to be deposed under oath. #ctl #p2 pic.twitter.com/SgJL5nXp7s
— PoliticusUSA (@politicususa) August 27, 2018
Avenatti said:
We’ve had an application on file with the court since April to take those depositions. The court has delayed ruling on the application because Michael Cohen and his counsel and Donald Trump asked for the stay in the case, basically for the case to be paused pending the criminal investigation. Well, as your viewers all know, the investigation ended last week, at least as it relates to Michael Cohen. He pled guilty to eight counts, one count going directly to the allegations is in our complaint. We have a hearing now on September 10th. We’re going to ask that the stay be lifted and the court rule immediately on our application to depose Michael Cohen and Donald Trump forthwith.
Mueller isn’t the only one that could force Trump under oath
For months, Donald Trump‘s legal team – led by the bumbling Rudy Giuliani – has been dodging an interview with Robert Mueller. They have pretended to be interested in a sit-down, but nobody who knows Trump believes he would ever survive such an interview.
While their efforts to avoid an interview with Mueller appear to have been successful so far, Avenatti is now taking matters into his own hands. Without a single move from the special counsel, Trump could still be forced to go under oath.
After all, Michael Cohen has already gone under oath in a court of law, claiming that Trump directed him to commit a federal crime. Trump has since blasted his former lawyer for those claims, but none of his panicked ramblings have been under oath.
If Michael Avenatti gets his way, the whole ballgame would change. The president would no longer be allowed to spew lies on Twitter without being held accountable. Instead, Trump would be left with two options: Either commit perjury or admit that he participated in a federal crime.
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Sean Colarossi currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was an organizing fellow for both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also worked with Planned Parenthood as an Affordable Care Act Outreach Organizer in 2014, helping northeast Ohio residents obtain health insurance coverage.
