US President Donald Trump has sought again to discredit Michael Cohen on Thursday, after his former long-time lawyer's bombshell congressional testimony in which he called Trump a racist and a conman.
"He lied a lot," Trump told a press conference in Vietnam after his summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
Trump insisted Mr Cohen's testimony on Wednesday had provided no evidence the Trump campaign had colluded with Russia in the 2016 US election and that this is what mattered most in the keenly awaited session before a House committee.
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Mr Cohen, who also worked as Trump's fixer, told legislators he had no direct knowledge of collusion but that he had suspicions.
Trump however insisted his former lawyer said no collusion had taken place.
"And I was a little impressed by that. He could have gone all-out. He went 95 per cent instead of 100 per cent. The fact is, there is no collusion," Trump said.
"He didn't lie about one thing. He said, no collusion with the Russian hoax. And I said, I wonder why he didn't lie about that, too, like everything else."
The president did not address any of Mr Cohen's specific, damning allegations about his decade of working with Trump.
Mr Cohen said for instance that Trump directed him last year to lie about hush payments made to a porn actress to silence her claims of an affair with Trump.
He also said Trump knew in advance in mid-2016 that WikiLeaks would publish emails stolen from rival Hillary Clinton's campaign by the Russians.
And Mr Cohen asserted that personal lawyers for Trump and his family reviewed and edited his written testimony to Congress in 2017 in which he lied about a Moscow real estate deal that was negotiated through the presidential election.
The president complained that Mr Cohen's testimony took place during the summit with Kim.
"I think having a fake hearing like that and having it in the middle of this very important summit is really a terrible thing," he said.
Trump again insisted the probe into Russian collusion is a "hoax" and a "witch hunt."
