"Mr. Trump responded by stating to the effect of 'wouldn’t that be great,'" Cohen said in his opening statement that was obtained before the hearing by The New York Times.

One of the most significant parts of Cohen's testimony was his assertion that Trump knew in advance that WikiLeaks planned to publish leaked emails that could hurt Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. Whether or not Trump knew beforehand has reportedly been a major line of inquiry for Robert Mueller's investigation.

"He once asked me if I could name a country run by a black person that wasn't a 'sh*thole.' This was when Barack Obama was President of the United States," Cohen said in his opening statement.

Cohen previously alluded to this in a November interview with Vanity Fair, but was more explicit on Wednesday.

"Mr. Trump is a racist," he said in his opening statement.

In that same Vanity Fair conversation last year, Cohen recalled a number of quotes from Trump that the interviewer labeled as "racist," but the lawyer didn't use that word himself. Now he's more explicitly accused the president of racism.

"In conversations we had during the campaign, at the same time I was actively negotiating in Russia for him, he would look me in the eye and tell me there's no business in Russia and then go out and lie to the American people by saying the same thing. In his way, he was telling me to lie," Cohen said.

Last month, BuzzFeed published a bombshell report that said Trump allegedly told Cohen to lie to Congress about the Moscow project. Robert Mueller quickly refuted the report; now it seems that the disagreement may have been over whether or not Trump explicitly told Cohen to be dishonest. In his testimony on Wednesday, the lawyer said that Trump made it clear he wanted him to lie but didn't directly say so.

"You need to know that Mr. Trump's personal lawyers reviewed and edited my statement to Congress about the timing of the Moscow Tower negotiations before I gave it," Cohen said.

Cohen has been convicted of lying to Congress over the timing of negotiations for a Trump Tower project in Moscow. While he originally swore under oath that efforts to build the tower had stopped in January 2016, Cohen later admitted that they continued until June 2016. Now he's also alleged that the president's attorneys approved his lies beforehand.

"To be clear: Mr. Trump knew of and directed the Trump Moscow negotiations throughout the campaign and lied about it," Cohen said. "He lied about it because he never expected to win the election. He also lied about it because he stood to make hundreds of millions of dollars on the Moscow real estate project."

There have been previous reports that Trump didn't actually believe he would win the 2016 presidential election, including Michael Wolff's 2018 book Fire and Fury.

Cohen said Wednesday that "Mr. Trump had frequently told me and others that his son Don Jr. had the worst judgment of anyone in the world."

The two have a complicated relationship: Don Jr. has admitted to wanting his father's approval, but his dad seems loathe to give it to him.

"I'm talking about a man who declares himself brilliant but directed me to threaten his high school, his colleges, and the College Board to never release his grades or SAT scores," Cohen said of Trump.

Cohen also said he was providing Congress with copies of letters Trump ordered him to write that contained those alleged threats.

"Mr. Trump tasked me to handle the negative press surrounding his medical deferment from the Vietnam draft. Mr. Trump claimed it was because of a bone spur, but when I asked for medical records, he gave me none and said there was no surgery," Cohen told Congress. "He finished the conversation with the following comment. 'You think I’m stupid, I wasn't going to Vietnam.'"

According to The Hill, Trump received five draft deferments during the Vietnam War: four for educational purposes and one for a bone spurs diagnosis that, according to some reports, was deliberately falsified by a doctor. Cohen seemed to allege as much on Wednesday when he said that Trump told him he'd never had surgery for bone spurs.

When questioned about how many women Cohen paid to sign nondisclosure agreements for Trump, he did not say that it was definitively just Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal.

"It's certainly the two that we know about," Cohen said.

"Unfortunately, this topic is something that's being investigated right now by the Southern District of New York, and I've been asked by them not to discuss and not to talk about these issues," Cohen said.

When Cohen was asked about the last time he spoke to Trump, he wasn't able to give a full answer because he said that the Southern District of New York is investigating the topic.

Overall, Wednesday's hearing was full of shocking statements and allegations about the Trump family.