‘Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire,’ and Other Contentious Exchanges From Cohen’s Congressional Hearing

For those who have closely followed every twist and turn of the investigations of President Donald J. Trump, there were new developments during Michael D. Cohen’s congressional hearing on Wednesday in front of the House Oversight and Reform Committee.

But for many watching, the standout moments came in the fiery, and occasionally puerile, exchanges between Mr. Cohen, President Donald J. Trump’s longtime lawyer, and Republican committee members set on impugning his credibility.

[Follow the hearing live with commentary from our reporters.]

“Liar, Liar”

Paul Gosar, a Republican representative from Arizona, reflected the tone of many of the Republican members’ exchanges with a sign set up behind his chair, displayed from the beginning of the hearing. The sign showed a picture of Mr. Cohen superimposed on flames, emblazoned with the words “LIAR, LIAR, PANTS ON FIRE!”

Following Mr. Gosar’s questioning (in which he mocked Mr. Cohen’s apparent desire to be seen as a sex symbol), Mr. Cohen said that he was the one responsible for the congressman’s tactics.

“It’s that sort of behavior that I’m responsible for,” Mr. Cohen said, referring to the sign. “I’m responsible for your silliness because I did the same thing that you’re doing now for ten years. I protected Mr. Trump for ten years.”

[Read the transcript from Mr. Cohen’s testimony.]

“You Didn’t Get Brought to the Dance”

Even before Mr. Cohen’s testimony began, tensions in the room ran high as Representative Mark Meadows of North Carolina attempted to postpone the hearing, citing what he said was a violation of a committee rule. (The attempt was unsuccessful.)

Mr. Meadows and the ranking member on the committee, Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, later pummeled Mr. Cohen, questioning him on the substance of some of his illegal activities including perjury and bank fraud, but also veering into name-calling and implications that Mr. Cohen was testifying in bad faith.

For instance, in Mr. Jordan’s initial round of questioning Mr. Cohen, Mr. Jordan suggested that he resented that he had not been employed by the White House — and that his testifying was a result of his resentment about not being able to continue his legal work for Mr. Trump there.

“You wanted to work in the White House and you didn’t get brought to the dance,” Mr. Jordan said.

“A Fool”

Other Republicans frequently yielded some of their time to Mr. Meadows and Mr. Jordan, influential members of the House Freedom Caucus and loyal defenders of the president. Representative James Comer of Kentucky let Mr. Jordan take the remainder of his time to again attack Mr. Cohen’s character. That time, Mr. Cohen took offense, responding to the congressman’s characterization of his testimony was incorrect.

“Shame on you, Mr. Jordan,” Mr. Cohen said.

[Donald Trump and Michael Cohen: the end of a New York friendship.]

However, some of the most memorable exchanges came when Mr. Cohen was questioned by other Republican members. Mr. Comer, for instance, mentioned that he had called Mr. Trump a cheat in his opening testimony. If that’s what he would call Mr. Trump, Mr. Comer asked, what might Mr. Cohen call himself?

“A fool,” Mr. Cohen responded.

“You calling — O.K.,” Mr. Comer said. “Well, no comment on that.”

Mr. Gosar, the Arizona Republican with the “LIAR, LIAR” sign, also attacked Mr. Cohen, saying that he, Mr. Gosar, had been getting texts “right and left, saying ‘how can anyone listen to this pathological person?’”

“There’s no truth with you whatsoever,” Mr. Gosar said. “And that’s why that’s important to you to look up here and” — referring to his sign — “look at the old adage that our moms taught us: ‘liar, liar, pants on fire.’”

“Don’t Give Me That Bull”

But Mr. Meadows was perhaps Mr. Cohen’s most consistent antagonist. When Mr. Cohen called himself a nice guy, the congressman from North Carolina cut in: “I would beg to differ. The record reflects that you’re not a nice guy.”

When Mr. Cohen claimed that he had been working on his written testimony late into the previous night, a red-faced Mr. Meadows said: “So you were writing it last night, Mr. Cohen? Don’t give me that bull.”

And after Mr. Cohen used a portion of his opening statement to recount racist statements he said Mr. Trump had made in his presence, Mr. Meadows gestured toward Lynne Patton, a black official at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, whom he said he had invited to the hearing.

“She says that as a daughter of a man born in Birmingham, Alabama, that there is no way that she would work for an individual who was racist,” he said.

“Neither should I, as the son of a Holocaust survivor,” Mr. Cohen replied.

In the afternoon session, two freshman Democratic congresswomen took up Mr. Meadows’s question about Ms. Patton.

Representative Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts asked Mr. Cohen whether he believed that someone could make the racist statements Mr. Trump has made, have a black friend, and still be racist. Mr. Cohen said that he did. Ms. Pressley agreed.

Representative Rashida Tlaib of Michigan went further, suggesting that Mr. Meadows had used Ms. Patton as a prop, an act that in itself was racist. Mr. Meadows objected strenuously, calling Ms. Tlaib’s accusation racist and, close to the hearing’s end, Mr. Cohen, who for hours had been the source of contention, sat quietly as the representatives argued among themselves.