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Michael Cohen Testifies Before House Oversight Committee. Aired 2:30-3p ET
Aired February 27, 2019 - 14:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[14:30:00] DEL. STACEY PLASKETT, (D), U.S. VIRGIN ISLANDS: And on May 3rd, 2018, one day after Mr. Giuliani's appearance, the president tweeted, and I quote, "Mr. Cohen and attorney received a monthly retainer not from the campaign and having nothing to do with the campaign from which he entered into through reimbursement, a private contract between two parties known as a nondisclosure agreement, or NDA."
The Office of Government Ethics, which is the agency which the federal government with responsibility over what the president needs to report publicly about his assets was puzzled by this it seems and they were skeptical that a retainer was actually in place, and asked to see the retainer agreement on call of May 8th with the president.
The president's personal council, Sheri Dillon, replied that she would, and I quote, "not permit OGE staff to read the agreement because it is privileged". Ms. Dillon would not even let OGE staff come to her office to review the retainer agreement.
Mr. Cohen, in a court filing made in August of last year, federal prosecutors stated that, quote, "in truth and in fact there was no such retainer agreement". Mr. Cohen, did you ever have a retainer agreement in place with the president for the payment to Ms. Clifford?
COHEN: No.
PLASKETT: So was Mr. Giuliani's statement inaccurate.
COHEN: Yes.
PLASKETT: Was Ms. Dillon's statement about the retainer agreement inaccurate?
COHEN: I'm sorry, Ms. Dillon's statement is...
PLASKETT: About the retainer agreement, is it inaccurate?
COHEN: And her statement is what?
PLASKETT: And her statement to them was, quote, "not to permit OGE staff to read the agreement because it is privileged".
COHEN: There was no agreement.
PLASKETT: And is the president's tweet or his statement accurate?
COHEN: And - I'm sorry, one more time?
PLASKETT: And his statement was, Mr. Cohen an attorney received a monthly retainer not from the campaign and having nothing to do with campaign from which he entered in through through a reimbursement.
COHEN: That's not accurate.
PLASKETT: You've mentioned some individuals to my colleague from New York, Ms. Connelly (ph), and also in your testimony about Mr. Weisselberg and other individuals, Ms. Rhona. Who are those individuals, are they will the Trump organization?
COHEN: They are.
PLASKETT: And are there other people that we should be meeting with?
COHEN: So Allen Weisselberg is the chief financial officer...
(CROSSTALK)
PLASKETT: You've got to quickly give us as many names as you can so we can get to them.
COHEN: ...in the Trump Organization (ph). Yes Ma'am.
PLASKETT: Is Ms. Rhona, what is Ms. Rhona's position?
COHEN: Rhona Graff is the -- Mr. Trumps executive assistant.
PLASKETT: And would she be able to corroborate many of the statements that you've made here?
COHEN: Yes she was -- her office is directly next to his and she's involved a lot that went on.
PLASKETT: And Mr. Cohen, when the president's lawyers were having the discussions with the Office of Government Ethics in 2018, did they reach out to you to talk with you about these payments?
COHEN: No, ma'am.
PLASKETT: And what did you -- did you share anything with them otherwise in any other conversation?
COHEN: I do not recall, no.
PLASKETT: Can the committee obtain more information about these facts by obtaining testimony documents from the White House, the Trump Organization, and the president's attorneys?
COHEN: I believe so.
PLASKETT: Mr. Chair, I think that those are the individuals that we should be speaking with. And I yield back at this time. CUMMINGS: The committee will now stand in recess again. We will come
back. Listen up, 30 -- 35 minutes -- 35 minutes after the last vote begins. So for Mr. Cohen, Mr. Cohen, we're talking about probably about an hour or so.
COHEN: All right, thank you so much.
[14:33:06]
(CROSSTALK)
JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Jake Tapper, live in Washington.
The man who once said he would take a bullet for Donald Trump took aim at the president today, calling him a racist, a con man and a cheat. In his testimony before the House Oversight Committee today, former Trump attorney and fixer, Michael Cohen, leveled explosive allegations, among them, that he believes the president knew about that infamous Trump Tower meeting seeking dirt on Hillary Clinton. And that Trump knew about efforts by his adviser, Roger Stone, to reach out to WikiLeaks ahead of the release of the stolen emails from the Democrats. Mr. Cohen also described the Catch-and-Kill culture designed to suppress negative stories about Donald Trump by having the parent company of the "National Enquirer" purchase the rights to those stories. Cohen insisted he never went to Prague, despite allegations in the Steele dossier that he did. And perhaps most significantly, Cohen said that the White House and specifically certain attorneys at the White House changed his original statement to Congress, that same testimony that he now says was a lie, and he's going to go to prison because it's a lie.
Let's discuss all of this. We'll start with CNN chief legal analyst, Jeffrey Toobin.
Jeff, there are a lot of questions about this possible suborning of perjury by the White House, the idea that, did the White House enable Cohen to give false testimony about the Trump Tower/Moscow.
Here is some a Q&A from Congressman Sarbanes, of Maryland, with Cohen in which they're basically was a cleanup about what the bottom line is.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
[14:35:00] REP. JOHN SARBANES, (D), MARYLAND: Did you have -- do you have a reaction to why there might not have been, in a sense, a protest to what was going to be false testimony that was going to be provided?
MICHAEL COHEN, FORMER PERSONAL ATTORNEY TO PRESIDENT TRUMP: No, sir, because the goal was to stay on message, which is limit the relationship whatsoever with Russia. It was short. There's no Russian contacts, there's no Russian collusion, there's no Russian deals. That's the message. That's the same message that existed well before my need to come and testify.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: He kept it vague, but it does seem like this is an area of potential news. How much of a role did the White House play in the creation of the false testimony that Cohen gave?
JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN CHIEF LEGAL ANALYST: Right. Remember, we've been sitting here all day, still the main news, as far as I'm concerned, is what was in the opening statement.
TAPPER: Sure.
TOOBIN: That was, I mean, I think an earthquake level of news. Of the stuff that came out in testimony, I think that issue of what went on in this preparation session -- because, remember, he wound up giving testimony for which he later pled guilty for lying to Congress. So the question is, did anyone in the White House encourage, knowingly participate in the creation of that false testimony. I couldn't tell from the testimony whether anyone he was talking about actually knew that the testimony was false. That's the key issue.
TAPPER: Or changed it to false testimony.
TOOBIN: Or changed it in a way they knew was false.
GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: Or knew whether he was lying to them.
TOOBIN: Right.
BORGER: Right.
TOOBIN: And of course, lawyers get lied to all the time, so maybe those lawyers were lied to, they weren't putting in false testimony. If you were doing a serious investigation, that whole exchange, you would get all the people who were present there, you would ask everyone separately what went on, you would look at the drafts of the testimony and see how it changed.
TAPPER: Cohen said he would have to go back and look at the drafts to see what exactly was changed and if the White House changed it to make it less truthfully.
TOOBIN: You know what he should do? Go back --
(CROSSTALK)
TAPPER: He would have done that already one would think.
Lying to Congress is one thing, lying to reporters and the public is another thing. That's not illegal, although certainly the special counsel has suggested that that is not insignificant.
There was another part of the hearing when it was asked whether or not President Trump encouraged Michael Cohen to not being honest about whether or not the president knew about these hush money payments to Stormy Daniels. Let's take a listen to that. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. KATIE HILL, (D), CALIFORNIA: A reporter for the magazine "Vanity Fair" has report that had she interviewed you the very next day on February 14th, 2018, about the payment and reimbursement. And she wrote, quote, last February 14th, I interviewed Cohen in his office about the statement he gave the FEC in which he said Trump didn't know about the Stormy payment or reimbursement for it."
Do you recall this meeting with the reporter?
COHEN: I do.
HILL: The reporter also wrote, "Trump called while I was there. I couldn't hear much but he wanted to go over what the public messaging would be."
Is that accurate?
COHEN: It is.
HILL: Did the president call you while you were having a meeting with the reporter?
COHEN: Yes.
HILL: Did the president call you to coordinate on public messaging about the payments to Ms. Clifford in or around February 2018?
COHEN: Yes.
HILL: What did the president ask or suggest that you say about the payments or reimbursements?
COHEN: He was not knowledgeable of these reimbursements and he wasn't knowledgeable of my actions.
HILL: He asked you to say that?
COHEN: Yes, ma'am.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BORGER: That's key. It's key. This is February 2018, Donald Trump, presumably from the Oval Office or somewhere else in the White House, called Michael Cohen and said, you got to lie for me in not so many words as Cohen testified today --
(CROSSTALK)
TAPPER: To a reporter, we should point out, not to Congress.
BORGER: Right. Right.
TAPPER: Lied to a reporter. BORGER: Just lie, period. We don't know -- we don't know who it was
to, but he wanted to get the story straight clearly. And it was -- it's kind of stunning that the president calls, he doesn't need to be told lie because, as Michael Cohen said time and time again, we had kind of a code that the president didn't have to spell it out and direct me, I knew exactly what he was saying. But I think this is very important.
And, by the way, not one Republican today was interested in addressing any questions of potential criminality about the president. They were only interested in taking down Cohen, but this is one area that you think may be someone could have followed up on.
TAPPER: Larry Noble, as an expert on campaign finance law, whether or not these payments were made with the president's knowledge or not, that's important in terms of whether or not the president played a role in the commission of a crime?
LARRY NOBLE, CNN CONTRIBUTOR, FEC: That's critical to it. If the president knew about this or if he directed this, then he is involved in committing the crime.
The other point is that the effort to hide -- if he was trying to hide it, that's also evidence of a knowing and willful violation. That's one of the things that the Department of Justice looks at, is, were you trying to hide what you were doing. And if so, that could be part of the criminal violation.
[14:40:10] TOOBIN: And one piece of evidence about whether you're trying to hide the money is how the money is paid.
(CROSSTALK)
TOOBIN: And the fact that they divided it up into increments of $35,000 instead of paying the $260,000 total, that also suggests --
(CROSSTALK)
DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: And that's what he said, point-blank. Michael Cohen said explicitly today that's why they split it up in order to try to hide it. What Trump people are telling me as they watch this, and I'm curious your take, is that we knew already that the president paid off Stormy Daniels, did it through Michael Cohen, the question is, the purpose? Was it to evade campaign finance laws or to hide it from his wife? Does it matter legally?
NOBLE: It does matter. For a campaign finance violation, it has to be for the purpose of influencing an election. But the fact that he may have also been trying to hide it from the wife doesn't matter. As long as he was trying to prevent this from damaging his campaign, you have a campaign finance violation. That's the purpose that you need.
TAPPER: And, David, one of the things that Michael Cohen has said throughout whenever Republicans, especially, or Democrats too are asking him what did the president say to you, what did he direct you to do is I worked for him for 10 years, he didn't need me direct me, he just would say what the talking points were and I knew I had to be on the same program.
DAVID GREGORY, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Right. What I think is devastating about Cohen's testimony is that he did the president's bidding long before he was the president for a decade. Knew how he operated, knew how he operated privately as a businessman. There was a code and he executed on that. He was the fixer. The guy who said he'd take a bullet for the president. And he was willing to stand up today and say some of these outrageous things that have been claimed against the president were not true. All the while Republicans said that he couldn't be believed about anything, he was actually doing things that were helping their line of argument.
I think the big piece that comes out to me, Jake, about all of this is what you're asking about. Those areas that are not about the political theater, not about the drama, but are -- that represent Cohen as an opening scene in the Mueller case about Russian collusion. He brings up this circumstantial evidence about whether he thinks Trump knew about the Trump Tower meeting, which we can get into later. These are areas that we may just be seeing a piece of today that maybe Mueller provides more --
(CROSSTALK)
BORGER: He told us the Southern District of New York is looking into things about Russia that he could not -- he would not answer questions about, so he gave us a big hint about that as well.
TAPPER: One of the big points, John and Nia, that the Republicans are trying to make is that, for lack of a better phrase, Michael Cohen is a scum bag. They're really making the point --
(CROSSTALK)
TAPPER: They're making the point that he's not a good guy. In fact, Mark Meadows, Congressman Mark Meadows said, you're not a nice person at one point.
And, in fact, this came out of a line of questioning, how much Michael Cohen was the fixer, the enforcer, during a line of questioning about how much he threatened people on Mr. Trump's behalf. Let's take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. JACKIE SPEIER, (D), CALIFORNIA: How many times did Mr. Trump ask you to threaten an individual or entity on his behalf?
COHEN: Quite a few times.
SPEIER: Fifty times?
COHEN: More.
SPEIER: One hundred times? COHEN: More.
SPEIER: Two hundred times?
COHEN: More.
SPEIER: Five hundred times?
COHEN: Probably. Over the 10 years.
SPEIER: Over the 10 years, he asked you --
COHEN: When you say threaten, I'm talking with litigation or an argument with --
SPEIER: Intimidation.
COHEN: A nasty reporter that has -- is writing an article.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: The argument that the Republicans seemed to be making is, you're a bad person, we shouldn't believe you, but there's the counterargument of, why did President Trump have this person working for him for 10 years?
JOHN KING, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: If you've ever sat and covered a mob trial, that's what it sounds like. The code, the intimidation. We know what the boss wants. The boss never specifically says anything directly about do wrong, committed crimes. That's the way it works. That's the culture. If you're listening to this and you believe Michael Cohen, then-businessman, Donald Trump, Candidate Donald Trump and President Donald Trump is the kind of guy who works in this way in which, frankly, if you're around it very long you need to take a shower.
The Republicans are going to say he's not to be believed. What's interesting, only one of the Republicans, Congressman Steube, of Florida, tried to get into the specifics of saying, wait, trying to question whether Michael Cohen is telling the truth when he said President Trump did things wrong. The other Republicans are not defending the president. They're attacking Michael Cohen. You don't hear any of them saying, there's no way Donald Trump paid this money or there's no way Donald Trump was breaking the law when he paid this money or any of the other things he said. There's a question about Cohen's credibility. One point, this is maybe we should elect Ted Barrett, on Capitol Hill, the House of Representatives. He asked Richard Burr, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, about the Roger Stone allegation. Michael Stone (sic) is in the room at Trump Tower. Roger Stones pops up on a speaker phone and tells then- Candidate Trump WikiLeaks is about to dump these damaging emails. You don't hear the Democrats or the Republicans pressing on that point. Ted asked Richard Burr, the committee has spent more than a year on this, and he says they have no documentation to prove that, that if there's documentation, he'd like to see it. That's where we're going to have questions. What does Robert Mueller know? David makes a key point. The special counsel may fill in some of these blanks for us. But there will be questions about, can Michael Cohen prove what he's saying, and that's one of them.
[14:45:33] TAPPER: And we should point out Roger Stone, in an e-mail to our Sara Murray, denies that, says it's not true. Although, again, that is somebody who has been indicted for lying, Roger Stone, criticizing somebody who's going to jail, partially for lying, Michael Cohen, of defending a president who also doesn't tell the truth.
JOHN: That's one of the problems. You have liars talking about liars talking about liars.
(CROSSTALK)
TOOBIN: If I can just interject about Roger Stone. I just interviewed Roger Stone right before he got arrested, and I had heard the rumor about, you know, the speaker phone conversation. And I just pulled the transcript of what Roger Stone said to me. And I said, "Supposedly, they have a witness that says he heard you telling Trump about WikiLeaks," and Roger says to me, I've heard it from 100 reporters. Prove it. Produce it. Who would that be?" And supposedly the witness overhears this on a conference, on a speaker phone, what would I tell them?" "Well, that you had inside information." "Saying what?" And Roger says, "But we knew it was coming. That was public information."
Now, in fact, it is true that Julian Assange had said publicly that there was -- that there was, you know, information -- information coming. Now, it is also possible, especially given the point you just made, that Roger Stone, if this conversation took place, was lying to Trump about --
(CROSSTALK)
TOOBIN: -- with Julian Assange.
BASH: It's also true that all of these people have now been asked this question under oath by Robert Mueller, so true or not, they have a position that they need to stick to.
KING: Including the president's assistant and Mr. Weisselberg.
(CROSSTALK)
TAPPER: Nia, what do you think is the takeaway of the average person at home who hasn't been following the ins and outs, who doesn't know who Lanny Davis is, or who doesn't know who Roger Stone is? What they see when they turn on?
NIA MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN POLITICS SENIOR REPORTER: I think it's a view inside Trump world that people hadn't had before. Some of the statements that Cohen made, the idea of people were in the Trump Organization essentially to protect Trump, that you came to work every day in defense of -- a person who wasn't the president at the time. He was a private businessman. All of the nitty-gritty ways in which the president was very much a micromanager, interested in every detail, whether it was fixing an online poll. I think that was really fascinating. Getting a really inside into how he operated as a businessman. I think that lays the ground work for other arguments that Cohen is making, this idea that, how could Trump really not know about this Trump Tower meeting if he was such a micromanager in his private life.
TAPPER: We have with us now, perhaps the world expert on former insider testifying against a senior president in front of Congress, John Dean, former Nixon White House counsel.
Mr. Dean, what did you make of the testimony so far? I know you said earlier that you thought Michael Cohen was -- seemed credible to you. Has he testified as to anything you think could cause a serious problem for President Trump?
JOHN DEAN, FORMER WHITE HOUSE COUNSEL TO PRESIDENT NIXON: I think the thing that's most troubling and the most serious part of his testimony is his further flushing out the story of the payment to Stormy Daniels. I think that is really going to be the problem for the president with this testimony.
He did raise other things. He doesn't have the depth of knowledge that is apparent at this point. He's somewhat handicapped because he's got closed here before the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, so he's staying out of those areas. But on the areas he's allowed to talk about, I think he's been a very effective witness. And he's going to be a lot of trouble for Mr. Trump.
TAPPER: President Nixon is not President Trump. John Dean is not Michael Cohen. I don't want to draw too many parallels. But do you hear ways that Republicans are going after Michael Cohen, either in front of the cameras or behind the scenes, that remind you of how Nixon advocates went after you?
DEAN: No question. This happened more before the House impeachment inquiry than the Senate Watergate Committee. When I testified before the House Impeachment Committee, the Republicans were trying to cut me up as badly as they could. And the president's lawyer was there to cross examine me as well. I discovered that the president's lawyer was not well informed. The members of the committee on the Republican side were not well informed. The Democrats actually did a very good job there and they were able to get on the record what they needed from me as a witness. So I see some of the same today, the tactics that the Republicans are using just to try to undercut any credibility in this witness. I think people can judge for themselves. He's -- he regrets having lied and he's telling the truth now and the truth hurts.
[14:50:29] TAPPER: One of the other ways that they're going at Michael Cohen is they're suggesting he's doing all of this to enrich himself with a book deal, with a television contract, with a movie deal, et cetera. Cohen admitted that the book publisher offered $750,000 to him for a book deal he did not accept, but he refused to say he would never accept any sort of book deal. Now I doubt that whatever Michael Cohen writes will be as well written as "Blind Ambition," the book you wrote after Watergate, but talk about that as a motivation, if you would. Because, obviously, you did what you did for your reasons. What do you make of those that say, you did it because you wanted to become famous, you did it because you wanted to write a book?
DEAN: What happened is, I was offered a book contract very early. I'd agree to help and cooperate with the government. And after my Senate testimony was the first time I got a very substantial book offer and I said no, I really can't do it. The prosecutors, the Watergate special prosecutors had asked me not to do it. And I made a commitment to them that until everything had come to rest I wouldn't write a book about it. But I thought that I should flush out my story because what you say in a Senate hearing or what you say in a lengthy trial is not everything you have to say and I wanted to put that statement on the record. At the time I wrote the book, only nine of my conversations with Nixon were available. Actually, in my most recent book where I touched on that called "The Nixon Defense," I had 37 conversations, which actually shed much more light on my dealings with the president than I had at the time that I wrote "Blind Ambition." So I hope Michael does do a book at some point. And he has a story to tell and history to fill in for us. So that's important.
TAPPER: John Dean, always good to get your perspective. Thanks so much.
DEAN: Thank you.
TAPPER: Michael Cohen also indicated that the Southern District of New York has a bigger ongoing investigation when it comes to President Trump.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED CONGRESSMAN: Is there any other wrongdoing or illegal act that you are aware of regarding Donald Trump that we haven't yet discussed today?
COHEN: Yes. And again, those are part of the investigation that's currently being looked at by the Southern District of New York.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: Well, that was quite a revelation.
Let's bring in Elie Honig, who used to work with the Southern District of New York U.S. attorney's office.
Elie, you have any idea what he's talking about there?
ELIE HONIG, CNN LEGAL ANALST: I have an educated guess. It's ominous news for the president and the people around him. The Southern District should be feared here. I say that as a Southern District alum. We know that the Southern District lobbed this major subpoena on the Inaugural Committee just a couple weeks ago. There are a lot of different loose ends there. We know the Southern District is looking at the Trump Org. They've been talking to some of the executives in the Trump Org. And I think, in a lot of ways, structurally speaking, the Southern District is more of a threat than Mueller. Mueller's under time pressure. We all know he's getting towards the ends. The Southern District will be there forever. Mueller is constrained as to what he can investigate. Russian interference and related issues. The Southern District can go into the finances, they can go wherever the evidence leads. And the last thing I'll say, coming from the Southern District, the ethic there's to be tenacious and to shoot for the top. If you have the proof, without regard to politics, without regard to fear, you shoot for the bosses every time.
TAPPER: And, Dana Bash, this is obviously what we've been hearing from President Trump's allies. They are most concerned about the Southern District of New York investigation, less so about Mueller.
BASH: As they should be, because Mueller, his core mission is to look at collusion, and not to say that there wasn't potential collusion, whatever that means, with people in and around the Trump world. We've seen that with Paul Manafort and others. But with regard to the Trump Org, number one, that obviously is not something he's looking into. In fact, Adam Schiff has been saying publicly that he's frustrated that Mueller hasn't been asking for the records of Deutsche Bank, where the president, the now president, finally got a loan, even though he couldn't get a lot of loans before because of the debt that he was in. Well, that's not Mueller's job, necessarily. But it is the job of the Southern District of New York if that loan, just one example, was gotten in a way that shouldn't have happened.
[14:54:59] GREGORY: I think it's worth reminding everybody watching this what's at play. There's the Mueller investigation. There's the Southern District of New York, which is separate. And then there's the politics. So the substance of whatever could be gleaned out of today's testimony may be the basis for impeachment proceedings. But the question you asked me, I think, is really important, how are people taking all of this in. My reaction to Cohen today, he totally lacks credibility and yet is utterly believable.
(LAUGHTER)
And I think a lot of people may feel that or -- but we shouldn't forget the "or." There are so many people -- John, you were talking about this during a break -- so many people out there watching the Republicans go after him and bring up all this stuff and they say, exactly, this is the Trump haters who are going after this guy, and this guy is a scum bag. We can't believe him and all of it is a farce. That's how this is being absorbed into the political --
(CROSSTALK)
BORGER: I think part of the problem is, is lying has become so normalized. And people think, maybe I've heard a little about that before. We haven't seen talked about Michael Cohen's testimony saying that the president never really did have bone spurs and he was just trying to avoid going to Vietnam. And Jim Jordan told Manu Raju, when Manu asked him, why aren't you guys talking about the president's potential criminality here regarding the hush money payments, and Jordan said, I think it's news we knew about. So they're making it old news. They're saying, OK, this is old, we know the president did this and, therefore, we can forget about it.
TAPPER: All right, stand by, everyone.
We'll keep talking but we'll squeeze in a quick break.
Michael Cohen is set to resume testimony a few moments from. Special coverage continues in a moment. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
TAPPER: Welcome back to our special coverage. I'm Jake Tapper.
Thanks for joining me as we cover Michael Cohen's testimony on Capitol Hill. The hearing is now in a recess. We're expecting Michael Cohen to return to the witness chair in just a few minutes.
[14:59:58] Let's talk about what we've learned so far from the president's former fixer. Speaking face-to-face with the Congress, he now admits he lied to, a few months ago, lies that Cohen claimed he told on behalf of his former boss and on behalf of himself.
