Michael Cohen's hearing and evidence ‘must have struck fear in Trump and his family’: Vanity Fair reporter

President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney and fixer, Michael Cohen, returned to Capitol Hill on Wednesday, March 6 for a closed-door meeting with the House Intelligence Committee. And Vanity Fair’s Emily Jane Fox, during an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” the next morning, stressed that Cohen had an abundance of documents with him—a sight she asserted “must have” been traumatic for Trump and his associates.

Fox told “Morning Joe” hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, “One of the most stunning images of the past week, which has been a fairly stunning week when it comes to Michel Cohen, was Cohen entering Capitol Hill yesterday with three suitcases and a big file folder. I think that that, to me, was a moment that must have struck fear in President Trump and his family—and anyone who works in the Trump Organization.”

In Vanity Fair, Fox has reported extensively on the legal problems of Trump and his associates. Fox was interviewing Cohen in his office on Valentine’s Day 2018 when President Trump himself called the Long Island-born attorney.

Fox told Scarborough and Brzezinski that before Cohen publicly testified before the House Oversight Committee on February 27, he “spent time digging through boxes in a storage unit to find documents that backed up some of his claims. He spent this past weekend before he went back to Capitol Hill yesterday doing some more document diving, and that is what was able to allow him to bring more documents yesterday.”

Scarborough pointed out that when pro-Trump Republicans questioned Cohen on February 27, they went out of their way to discredit his testimony and paint as untrustworthy—and Scarborough (a NeverTrump conservative and former Republican congressman) invited Fox to comment on a new Quinnipiac poll in which Americans were asked whether they found Trump or Cohen more believable. While 50% found Cohen more believable, only 35% found Trump more believable.

Fox responded, “What a sad state of affairs that number is—that the American public believes someone who admitted to lying to Congress more than their own president of the United States. I think that Cohen felt like he went to Congress and did what he needed to do. I think the fact that he brought documents with him—those suitcases this week and the documents that he showed publicly last week—I think that is why you see the big discrepancy, and I think that Cohen was pleased with that.”

Fox added, however, that “there are still questions about Cohen’s credibility” and that “he still is facing some very serious things in short order”—including a three-year prison sentence that he is set to begin serving in May.