WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday subpoenaed President Donald Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen to testify, a day after Cohen said he planned to postpone an appearance next week in the U.S. House of Representatives, Cohen’s adviser Lanny Davis said.
“This morning the Senate Intelligence Committee served Michael Cohen with a subpoena,” Davis said in a statement.
MSNBC and CNN said the subpoena called for Cohen to appear before the panel in mid-February.
A spokesman for Senator Richard Burr, the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, declined to comment on the subpoena.
Cohen, who has pleaded guilty to crimes including campaign finance violations during Trump’s 2016 election campaign and is cooperating with investigators, postponed his scheduled House appearance because of “ongoing threats against his family from Trump” and Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani, Cohen’s adviser, attorney Lanny Davis, said on Wednesday.
Trump called Cohen a “rat” in a tweet last month for cooperating with prosecutors. Cohen had been Trump’s self-described longtime “fixer” and once said he would take a bullet for the New York real estate developer.
In a Fox News interview this month, and other forums, Trump also suggested he had damaging information on Cohen’s father-in-law. “That’s the one that people want to look at,” Trump said in the interview. Giuliani also referred to possible issues with him.
Reporting by Tim Ahmann and Karen Freifeld; Writing by David Alexander; editing by Diane Craft