President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer told Congress on Wednesday that Trump knew ahead of time that WikiLeaks had emails damaging to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, and he testified that Trump is a “racist,” a “conman” and a “cheat”.

The hearing was expected to provide the most damning depiction to date of Trump’s campaign and business operations from a onetime member of the President’s inner circle.

It is the latest step in Cohen’s evolution from legal fixer for the president he once boasted that he’d “take a bullet” for Trump to a foe who has implicated him in federal campaign finance violations.

Michael Cohen suggested in prepared testimony obtained by The Associated Press that Trump also implicitly told him to lie about a Moscow real estate project. Cohen has pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about the project, which he says Trump knew about as Cohen was negotiating with Russia during the 2016 election campaign.

Cohen’s claims that Trump had advance knowledge of the emails contradict the president’s assertions that he was in the dark, but it was not clear what evidence Cohen had to support the allegation or even how legally problematic it would be for Trump.

Cohen arrived in the hearing room just before the session was to start. An earlier restriction that the hearing was not to delve into Russia would not be followed, said House Reform and Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings of Maryland.