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- Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez used her questioning time during Michael Cohen’s Wednesday congressional hearing to do something few other lawmakers did effectively: ask questions and elicit answers.
- Rather than grandstanding, Ocasio-Cortez had Cohen name several individuals Congress could subpoena to provide new information about the financial crimes of which the president has been accused. She won widespread praise.
- The questioning showed how Ocasio-Cortez can simultaneously do her job and hold a captive audience.
The meat of Michael Cohen’s allegations against President Donald Trump were made during the first 30 minutes of Wednesday’s congressional hearing. Members of Congress elicited little new information from the president’s former lawyer and fixer in the hours of testimony that followed his explosive opening statement.
Most Republicans used their time to ream Cohen out, painting a picture of a revenge-seeking “pathological liar.”
Most Democrats used their questioning time to grandstand and restate the evidence of crimes the president has been accused of.
Neither approach led to much substantive progress in what was supposed to be an effort at truth-seeking.
Reporters and pundits took to Twitter throughout the day to criticise lawmakers for showboating. They tweeted suggested questions and begged the committee members to do their jobs.
It seems that Ocasio-Cortez listened.
When she was given her five minutes of questioning time toward the end of the day, the freshman lawmaker dove into an efficient series of questions about the financial crimes Trump has been accused of.
In just a few minutes, Ocasio-Cortez had Cohen explain how Trump could have deflated the value of his assets to pay fewer taxes and inflated their value for insurance purposes. Cohen named three men he said are associated with the National Enquirer who he said possess potentially damaging information about the president. He named three Trump Organisation executives who could also be useful to the House Oversight Committee.
Ocasio-Cortez also made the case for Congress to investigate Trump’s tax returns and financial information.
“Do you think we need to review [Trump’s] financial statements and his tax returns in order to compare them?” Ocasio-Cortez asked.
“Yes, and you’d find it at the Trump Org.,” Cohen said.
‘Impossible not to respect’
Those four minutes of questioning won Ocasio-Cortez overwhelming praise, including from some sceptics.
Legal experts say it laid important groundwork for Congress to subpoena new individuals and information relating to financial crimes Trump is accused of committing.
“None of the representatives before her bothered to pursue those areas,” Jeffrey Cramer, a former longtime federal prosecutor who spent 12 years at the Justice Department, told INSIDER. “It does lay the groundwork for what every American should want. Specifically, a critical review of the finances for the most powerful person in the world.”
Patrick Cotter, a former federal prosecutor who worked with members of the special counsel Robert Mueller’s team, called Ocasio-Cortez’s questioning “not new or unexpected, but definitely foreshadowing” in an email to INSIDER.
The Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler, who has clashed with the lawmaker in the past, said lawmakers should follow Ocasio-Cortez’s example.
New York Magazine columnist Ed Kilgore wrote, “I’m probably the last passenger to climb aboard the @AOC train. But her performance today was impossible not to respect.”The New York Times ran an op-ed on Thursday titled, “How Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Won the Cohen Hearing.”
Ocasio-Cortez thanked her supporters and used the moment to credit her nontraditional training and her staffers.
“Bartending + waitressing (especially in NYC) means you talk to 1000s of people over the years. Forces you to get great at reading people + hones a razor-sharp BS detector,” she tweeted. “Just goes to show that what some consider to be ‘unskilled labour’ can actually be anything but.”
Ocasio-Cortez knows her audience
Many lawmakers use congressional hearings to make names for themselves.
Sen. Kamala Harris became nationally famous as a freshman senator when she was cut off and rebuked during her questioning of Trump administration officials. GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham won right-wing praise when he slammed Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings as the “most unethical sham” he’d seen in politics.
But Ocasio-Cortez already has a bigger name than most other Washington lawmakers, and her Twitter reach is second only to the president.
Some have said younger members such as Ocasio-Cortez don’t need to grandstand during hearings in part because they don’t communicate with their audience through televised news.
“When they need to attract media attention, when they need to speechify, they use social media. That’s how they connect,” Elie Mystal, a commentator at Above the Law, tweeted about freshman Democrats.
Ocasio-Cortez can reach millions of her followers and influence news coverage through social media, and she can use congressional hearings to simply do her job.
The freshman congresswoman also likely knew that anything she did or said at the hearing would attract significant attention – and that every word would be heavily scrutinised, as her treatment by conservative media has proven.
She later said on Twitter that as a woman of colour she is held to a higher standard.
“We’re used to being held to a diff bar. To being doubted. To getting new hoops thrown @ us last min,” she tweeted. “So we know how to perform.”
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