Michael Cohen's guilty plea about lying to congressional investigators isn't anything that should change the landscape where President Donald Trump is concerned, Sen. John Thune said Thursday.
"There wasn't any conclusion (about) collusion on his part with Russia, and I haven't seen anything that disproves that," the South Dakota Republican told Fox News' "America's Newsroom."
Cohen, Trump's former longtime attorney, pleaded guilty on Thursday about lying to Congress about the work he did on a Trump real estate deal in Russia, and agreed to cooperate with Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Trump soon after said Cohen was lying to get a shorter sentence from Mueller.
"It is a little too early to be drawing any conclusions about this," said Thune. "As the president pointed out, he thinks that Michael Cohen is obviously trying to make a deal. It is in his own self-interest to do that. I don't think that there has been anything that changes the landscape so to speak where the president is concerned."
Thune added that "we all' want Mueller to be thorough and finish the investigation into Russia and the 2016 presidential campaign but "it can't just go on forever."
"The longer these things drag on, it gets very wearing on the American people," said Thune. "There should be a point at which they have done their work, asked every question they possibly can, and it is time to move on. The president has important work to do for the American people. Obviously, this has been a big distraction."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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