Fox News contributor, former Trump campaign official prepared Corey Lewandowski for House testimony

President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski had a very interesting companion at Tuesday’s hearing before the House Judiciary Committee: Trump’s former deputy campaign manager, longtime Republican dirty trickster, and Fox News contributor David Bossie.

Bossie accompanied Lewandowski on Tuesday; the pair were seen chatting together on Fox News at one point shortly before the hearing:

Lewandowski and Bossie

The hearing was called as part of the first official investigations by House Democrats for a potential impeachment of the president on issues such as obstruction of justice.

During his testimony, Lewandowski repeatedly refused to answer Democratic lawmakers’ questions in any manner beyond what is already public in the Mueller report. But this didn’t stop him from answering Republican members’ questions — and echoing their talking points to declare that “the investigation was populated by many Trump haters who had their own agenda — to try and take down a duly elected president of the United States.”

And as CNN also reports, Bossie himself led the preparation process for Lewandowski’s testimony.

Bossie has a lengthy history of manufacturing and peddling smears against the Clintons, including selectively editing transcripts and videos and even harassing a mother about her daughter’s suicide. Then-President George H.W. Bush condemned Bossie and Citizens United for what he called “filthy campaign tactics” against the Clintons during the 1992 presidential campaign. Bossie was severely criticized in 2018 when, appearing on Fox News, he told Black guest Joel Payne that “You're out of your cotton-picking mind.”

More recently, Bossie was the subject of a damaging report in Axios this past May which uncovered that donations to his pro-Trump fundraising network — which targeted populations such as elderly donors — had reportedly gone mostly to benefit his own salary and the network itself. This reporting led the Trump campaign to distance itself from Bossie at the time. But this month, The Daily Beast reported that Bossie got to meet again with Trump in the White House to begin repairing the relationship.

Bossie’s most recent appearance on Fox News was on the July 31 episode of The Story to talk about the issue of racial divisions in the current political debate — which he maintained was just a Democratic ploy against the president after the supposed failure of the Russia investigation.

“Well, this is a sad period for us,” Bossie said. “You know, after two years of Russia collusion, 'Russia, Russia, Russia, the president is a Russian agent.' It was outrageous, it was a lie. It was built on a lie. That has failed, it has flopped. The Mueller hearing is over, the report is done, and the Democrats move on to race, and that's where we are today.”

Video file

Citation From the July 31 edition of Fox News' The Story with Martha MacCallum