Michael Cohen's testimony will be 'embarrassing' to Trump -- and it could be much worse: CNN panel

Trump "fixer" Michael Cohen is due to testify publicly in Congress this week, and a pair of CNN guests both agreed that the spectacle will be "embarrassing" for President Donald Trump -- and that's his best-case scenario.

During a discussion about Cohen's upcoming testimony, CNN's Poppy Harlow asked journalist Garrett Graff about the political damage that Trump could take from the hearing by asking whether it would incriminate the president in criminal activity or if it would simply humiliate him.

"It could be both incriminating and damning, and also embarrassing," Graff replied.

Graff then went on to dismiss Republican efforts to use Cohen's past admissions of lying under oath to discredit his entire testimony against the president.

"Prosecutors are... not letting Michael Cohen say the things that he is saying in court without corroborating evidence," Graff explained. "Prosecutors seized something like 292,000 documents from Michael Cohen when they raided his office last April, and you have to assume that Michael Cohen has been drawing upon those documents, those archived materials -- telephone calls, recordings, e-mails, etc. -- to make the case that he has been making in federal court about the president's actions."

Former NSA attorney Susan Hennessey agreed that it was very likely that Cohen's testimony would, at best, embarrass the president given that House Democrats may know they won't be able to compel him to testify after he reports to prison.

"I think that legislators are going to be approaching [this] as if it is going to be their one real public shot to get Michael Cohen on the record about these really serious issues," she said.

Watch the video below.