During seminal Michael Cohen hearing, the insiders became outsiders

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Breaking down Michael Cohen's shifting statements on President Trump

The insiders were outsiders.

Washington is a place known for its “access.” Who has the “inside” scoop on legislation. A nomination. What’s going on at the State Department. The White House.

The nation’s capital rewards its insiders. And some outside the Beltway deride the very concept of “insiders.”

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But on Capitol Hill Wednesday, most in the press corps were “outsiders.”

It’s an issue of space.

There are only so many seats in the House Oversight Committee hearing room in the Rayburn House Office Building. And so when former Trump laywer and fixer Michael Cohen was inside the hearing, most of the press corps was outside.

Lines of TV equipment, cameras, tripods, laptops, equipment bags and microphone cables littered the corridor floors near the hearing room. Although most reporting on the Cohen hearing couldn’t get into the room – or needed to remain outside the room so they could go live on the air – they did the next, best thing. They stood in hallway by the hearing room and streamed the session on their phones and computers, even though the marquee event unfolded just a few feet away and through a couple of layers of plaster.

The Cohen hearing will likely establish itself as one of the seminal events of the 116th Congress. That’s why the Capitol flooded with reporters and scribes who rarely cover the place. Yet if reporters really wanted to be “inside” somewhere and not loitering in a hallway, all they had to to do was saunter down the corridor to the House Financial Services Committee. In that conclave, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell delivered testimony on monetary policy. Or they could have walked a few steps the other direction for a markup session on school infrastructure legislation before the House Education and Workforce Committee. Maybe stroll next door to the Longworth House Office Building to hear U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer discuss trade with China.

To be fair, there were lots reporters in all of those forums.

But none of those hearings involved Michael Cohen.

So, to be an insider on the Cohen story, you had to be an outsider.

This is just the way things unfold sometimes when you’re reporting on Capitol Hill. Sometimes everyone is in the room. Sometimes you’re not.

With so many scribes standing in the corridor near the Cohen hearing, it’s not surprising people may have missed other things unfolding Wednesday on Capitol Hill.

Reps. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., and Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., introduced their “Medicare for All Act” at a press conference about an hour into the Cohen hearing.

Some liberals criticized the timing of the rollout, virtually buried by the Cohen hearing. Moderate Democrats who are wary of Medicare For All, applauded the timing. They appreciated that the Cohen hearing buried the rollout.

On the House floor, lawmakers approved the first major piece of legislation on firearms in a quarter century. The House voted 240 to 190 to require universal background checks for the purchase of guns. Some watching the Cohen coverage may have seen that debate and vote. House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-MD) recessed the Cohen hearing for nearly two hours so lawmakers could head to the floor to vote on the gun measure.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., was an outsider as well. The California Democrat spent part of the day speaking at a forum a few miles north of the Capitol at Howard University. Pelosi returned to Capitol Hill for the gun vote. When asked about the Cohen confab, Pelosi said, “I didn’t see one word of the hearing.” She added that what concerned her more than Cohen were “the bad policies of Donald Trump.”

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But by nightfall, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) was fundraising off the Cohen hearing – in Pelosi’s name. The DCCC emailed a fundraising pitch to supporters from “Nancy Pelosi” late Wednesday.

“What we witnessed today should alarm us all,” read the missive, sent on behalf of Pelosi. “And it should light a fire under us to work to get to the truth of the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.”

Cohen returned to Capitol Hill Thursday for yet another all-day session – his third this week.

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The House Intelligence Committee conducted a private meeting with Cohen. No streaming this time. The cavalcade of reporters lined up on three levels of the Capitol Hill Visitor’s Center, near a spiral staircase which leads to the Intelligence Committee suite underground. Reporters and TV crews again arranged a dragnet to capture video and sound bites of anyone coming and going from the hearing. No “insiders” here except members of the committee, staff, Cohen and his counsel, Lanny Davis. This culminated in Cohen departing the Capitol late in the day, telling reporters he was returning on March 6.

What’s interesting is that Cohen once personified the idea of “insider.” For many years, Cohen was the quintessential insider in the world of President Trump. After Cohen’s admitted crimes sent him to prison, he’s the archetypical outsider. Yet lawmakers and reporters want nothing more than to glean information about the president from none other than Cohen and when he was an insider.

These Congressional tableaus unfolded against the backdrop of the summit between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, half a world away in Hanoi, Vietnam. Here you had the American President, the consummate insider, bringing into the fold leader of the most-isolated country in the world. Kim is the supreme outsider.

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Yet Mr. Trump and Kim settled nothing when it came to nuclear arms. They may continue negotiations offstage. The president may have briefly granted Kim insider status by agreeing to two summits. But North Korea will fundamentally remain an outsider on the global stage until there’s an agreement on nuclear arms and Pyongyang alters its behavior.

Except for reporters traveling with Mr. Trump in Hanoi, reporters back in Washington had to get all of their information about the summit the same way most got information about the Cohen hearing: on TV or streaming on their mobile devices. The Hanoi reporters may as well have been lingering in the corridor outside the Cohen hearing – and the reporters in the hallway may as well have been in Hanoi.

Everything was inside out.