US President Donald Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen has been scheduled to testify publicly in Congress next month.

Cohen said in a statement Thursday he had accepted an invitation to testify from Representative Elijah Cummings, the Democratic chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in the House of Representatives..

The testimony poses a potential new threat to the president in the Russia collusion investigation.

In December, Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison for crimes that included arranging hush payments during the 2016 presidential election to silence women who claim to have had affairs with Trump.

"I look forward to having the privilege of being afforded a platform with which to give a full and credible account of the events which have transpired," Cohen said in the statement.

Cohen, who had been Trump's right-hand-man at the Trump Organization in New York, confessed to covering up for his boss's "dirty deeds."

PressTV-'Trump paid porn star hush money before election'

PressTV-'Trump paid porn star hush money before election'

A lawyer for President Donald Trump had paid $130,000 as hush money to a former porn star a month before the 2016 US election, a report says.

Meanwhile, Trump dismissed the news of Cohen's upcoming testimony in Congress as unimportant, claiming he had no worries about what Cohen would say about him.

Last month, Trump had referred to Cohen as a "rat" who was helping the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) gather incriminating evidence against him for what he described as a "witch hunt."Source: presstv.com