Even as President Trumps' former lawyer, Michael Cohen readies himself for more talks about Russia's interference, the president said that the congressional questioning last week of his former lawyer may have contributed to the failure of his summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. However, his national security advisor thinks that Trump's meeting at Hanoi was a success.
A high-stakes second summit to strike a disarmament deal with Kim broke up in disarray in Vietnam Thursday, with Trump saying: "Sometimes you have to walk and this was just one of those times." Michael Cohen, Trump's former lawyer testified before the House Oversight Committee and called him a racist, conman and a cheat as Trump as meeting Kim Jong Un for a summit in Hanoi, Vietnam. Trump later complained of the hearing coinciding with the summit and called it a fake. Trump said the hearing may have contributed to the "walk".
"For the Democrats to interview in open hearings a convicted liar & fraudster, at the same time as the very important Nuclear Summit with North Korea, is perhaps a new low in American politics and may have contributed to the 'walk'," he tweeted.
"Never done when a president is overseas. Shame!" Still, US National Security Advisor John Bolton said that the summit should be seen as "a success, defined as the president protecting and advancing American national interests."
The summit's collapse followed the leaders' historic meeting in Singapore that produced only a vague commitment from Kim to work "toward complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula."
According to senior US officials, North Koreans had demanded the lifting of all UN Security Council economic sanctions imposed on Pyongyang in the week leading up to the Hanoi summit. Pyongyang however, was offering only to close only part of the Yongbyon complex, a sprawling site covering multiple facilities — and the North is believed to have other uranium enrichment plants.
North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho, disputed the US account, saying Pyongyang offered to dismantle all "nuclear production facilities in the Yongbyon area" in exchange for partial sanctions relief.
Democrats and House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff, described the Hanoi meeting as a "spectacular failure."
Much of the criticism of the summit was sparked by Trump's remarks on the case of an American student tortured and left in a coma in North Korea.
Trump said he believed Kim's claim that he did not know what happened to Otto Warmbier, who died at age 22 days after being sent back to the United States in 2017.
Bolton said Trump had been clear that Warmbier's death was "barbaric and unacceptable," although Schiff countered that the president's "obsequious comments" had compounded the summit's failure.
Bolton was touring the Sunday political shows the morning after the US and South Korea announced an end to key annual large-scale military exercises.
The manoeuvrers have been a perennial target of North Korean fury — condemned by Pyongyang as provocative rehearsals for war.
Opponents of scrapping the drills warn that it could affect the combat readiness of US and South.
