A new Mueller court filing describes how Michael Cohen negotiated with the Kremlin about a Moscow business deal during the 2016 campaign.
And according to the document, Cohen spoke to Trump about the deal more than three times during that period, and asked both Trump and other senior campaign officials about a Trump trip to Russia in connection with the deal.
Cohen is pleading guilty to lying to Congress by saying these negotiations had ended by January 2016 and by denying that he spoke to Trump about them.
The details that emerge in the document are fascinating and rich.
But the main takeaway is that Cohen and others in the Trump organization were actively doing a Russia deal that linked Trump’s emerging presidential candidacy with his business interest in a Moscow Trump Tower. And Trump knew about it, to a degree yet to be revealed.
Until now, many have speculated that there must be some link between Trump’s business interests in Russia and his campaign conduct. The Cohen plea provides more concrete evidence of such a link.Starting in September 2015, the Trump Organization was pursuing a deal to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. Cohen was working on making the deal happen.
In mid-January of 2016, someone described as “a U.S. citizen third-party intermediary” and identified only as “Individual 2” suggested to Cohen that he contact Putin’s press secretary for “approvals” from the Russian government.Cohen emailed Putin’s press secretary twice, on Jan. 14 and Jan. 16, 2016.
On Jan. 20, Cohen got a call from the press secretary’s assistant. They spoke for 20 minutes, and Cohen described the deal.
The next day, Jan. 21, Individual 2 wrote to Cohen that he should call them about Putin, because “they called today.”That began a period of negotiations lasting six months. Apparently, the Russians’ goal was to get Trump to visit Russia and meet Putin. Cohen asked Trump and other campaign officials about Trump traveling to Russia for the meeting. Cohen would go to Russia ahead of time to negotiate the details.
In May, things heated up. Individual 2 emailed Cohen explaining the state of play. “I had a chat with Moscow,” he wrote. “ASSUMING the trip does happen the question is before or after the convention … Obviously the pre-meeting trip (you only) can happen anytime you want but the 2 big guys where [sic] the question. I said I would confirm and revert.”
This email makes clear that there was a close connection between Trump’s status as a candidate and the visit.Cohen wrote back about “My trip before Cleveland” — where the Republican national convention would be held starting on July 18. Trump would travel to Russia “once he becomes the nominee after the convention.”
Over the next month, Individual 2 sent Cohen the paperwork for a visa, which Cohen seems to have filled out.
The trip looked like it was a go to Cohen, but it was called off around June 14, 2016, when Cohen met Individual 2 at Trump Tower to tell him it wasn’t happening. According to Cohen, the real estate deal was also off at that point.
The document doesn’t say how or why Cohen’s trip was canceled. The most logical possibility is surely that Trump’s campaign advisers told him that he couldn’t go to Moscow after becoming the Republican nominee.
Trump and his supporters will no doubt insist that Cohen and Individual 2 were freelancing, not really representing Trump or the campaign. But the fact that Cohen kept Trump in the loop by asking him about possible travel to Russia strongly suggests that Trump knew that the negotiations over the Moscow Trump Tower were continuing during this period.
Trump supporters might add that it isn’t surprising to discover that Trump didn’t stop his business negotiations with Russia just because he was running for president. Yet it remains significant that those negotiations were happening with Putin’s office directly, not just with real estate developers in Moscow.Trump supporters can also point out that the deal was canceled. Nevertheless, it seems likely that the deal was killed not because Trump realized it was wrong but because outside advisers told him it would look bad.
Cohen’s latest revelations on their own don’t constitute evidence of a crime or impeachable offense by Trump. However, they do show that Trump was part of a negotiation that linked his status as a candidate to his business interests in Russia. They bring Mueller’s team an important step closer to explaining Trump’s Russia ties during the campaign.
Michael Cohen Pleads Guilty to Lying to Congress About Effort to Build Moscow Tower
Former lawyer for President Trump charged as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation
.. Prosecutors told the judge Mr. Cohen downplayed to investigators his contacts with the Russian government. They said Mr. Cohen had a 20-minute conversation with a Kremlin representative about the proposed deal, but he told Congress that after emailing Russian President Vladimir Putin’s top press official for help in January 2016, he never got a response from the Kremlin... Mr. Cohen’s false statements were partly aimed at concealing his discussions with Mr. Trump’s family members within the Trump Organization about the project.. Mr. Cohen also lied about possible travel to Russia for the project during the campaign, he said. Mr. Cohen told Congress he had discussed the proposal with Mr. Trump on three occasions and that he “never considered asking” Mr. Trump to travel to Russia for the project. In fact, prosecutors said, Mr. Cohen asked Mr. Trump about traveling to Russia and asked a senior campaign official about the matter.Prosecutors also said Mr. Cohen agreed to travel to Russia, which he had told Congress he never agreed to do. Mr. Cohen said Thursday the trip did not happen, and that he has never visited Russia... A list of questions the special counsel provided to the president’s legal team earlier this year asked specifically about his communications with Mr. Cohen about Russian real-estate projects during the campaign.. Under his first plea deal, Mr. Cohen and the government agreed to a sentence of between about four years and five years in prison. The false-statement charge carries a maximum of five years in prison... On Thursday, Mr. Cohen said he also lied by asserting the Moscow project efforts had ended in January 2016, when they continued through June 2016. Mr. Trump became the Republican Party’s effective nominee a month earlier... prosecutors said Mr. Cohen minimized the links between the Moscow project and Mr. Trump to give the false impression that the deal talks had ended before the 2016 Iowa caucus, in an attempt to limit the ongoing Russia investigations.Mr. Trump on Thursday called Mr. Cohen a “weak person” and accused him of “lying” to get a reduced sentence.
.. “there would have been nothing wrong” if he had done it. He said he opted not to do the project because he was “focused on running for president.”
During the campaign, Mr. Trump repeatedly said he didn’t have business dealings with Russia.
.. Both Mr. Cohen and another Trump associate, Mr. Sater—identified in the court papers Thursday as “Individual-2”—said in emails obtained by investigators that they planned to enlist top Russian officials’ help for the project.
.. In January 2016, Mr. Cohen sought help from Mr. Putin’s top press official in arranging the deal
.. Mr. Cohen met with the House and Senate Intelligence Committees in October 2017. The interviews focused largely on his efforts to build the Trump Tower in Moscow. In his statement for the Senate Intelligence Committee last year, Mr. Cohen wrote the proposal was “solely a real estate deal and nothing more.”
Does Donald Trump Regret Winning the US Presidency?
I think Trump has regretted becoming President from the moment he knew he had won on election night. I don’t think Trump thought he had any more chance of winning than anybody else did, which is to say unlikely in the extreme. Trump probably understood winning would have consequences, but I don’t think he really understood them. Trump is not someone who carefully thinks through the possible consequences of his actions. It can be taken for granted Trump knew there would be consequence, because at least Cohen, and his Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg would have sat him down and explained to him that even running for President was drawing a dangerous amount of attention to himself, let alone winning. Given how Trump has historically gone about doing business, he can not afford close scrutiny.
I think on one level Trump is loving being President, it is the ultimate ego boost, he probably likes the pomp and ceremony. although the fact he has to go to Paris to get a military parade, with real tanks and missiles must be driving him nuts. He isn’t enjoying the constant mockery, he hates that everybody is always critical of everything he does, he hates the complexity of a job he can’t get his head around, and he really hates that he can’t just order everybody about. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he really did believe he would be able to lock up Hillary with no more processes than an executive order.
Add to all that he has the Mueller investigation, the New York’s Southern District investigation. He’s lost his compliant congress, come January Congress is going to be making his life miserable, and I think you can expect to see these investigations multiplying. Plus all his old business colleagues are going to be turning on him, Cohen already has, and Allen Weisselberg probably has as well.
At some point, if he isn’t already, Trump is going to be thinking that the only way he can survive this is to follow in Xi Jinping’s footsteps and make himself President for life, Trump’s problem he is not even remotely in Xi Jinping’s league. Trump has surrounded himself with the foolish, the greedy, and the outright stupid. The problem is that Trump is stupid enough, and perhaps desperate enough he might conceivably try it. If that day ever does come, the opportunists, and grifters will savage each other getting to the exits, the real danger for Trump and the office is going to be in the fools he has surrounded himself with. While what in effect would be an attempted coup will have zero chance of ever actually working, and it would probably end up having all the elements of a farce, the precedent could still end up being very damaging.
So yes I would put good money on the fact that Trump spends a lot of his time feeling sorry for himself, and wishing that he gotten a handful less votes in the right places. Maybe he even wishes he hadn’t taken that ride down his golden elevator.
FOX & FRIENDS HURRIEDLY SHUTS DOWN INTERVIEW AS TRUMP RANTS ABOUT MUELLER
Anchors grew visibly uncomfortable as they listened to the president undermine his own legal defense.
The interview went off the rails, however, when the Fox hosts asked Trump about the Russia investigation dogging his presidency, and whether he would agree to interview with Mueller:
“Well, if I can. The problem is that it’s such a—if you take a look, they’re so conflicted, the people that are doing the investigation. You have 13 people that are Democrats, you have Hillary Clinton people, you have people that worked on Hillary Clinton’s foundation. They’re all—I don’t mean Democrats. I mean, like, the real deal. And then you look at the phony Lisa Page and [Peter] Strzok and the memos back and forth and the F.B.I.—and by the way, you take a poll at the F.B.I. I love the F.B.I.; the F.B.I. loves me. But the top people at the F.B.I., headed by Comey, were crooked.”
“You look at the corruption at the top of the F.B.I.—it’s a disgrace,” Trump continued, practically yelling, as the Fox hosts stared ahead nervously. “And our Justice Department—which I try and stay away from, but at some point I won’t—our Justice Department should be looking at that kind of stuff, not the nonsense of collusion with Russia. There is no collusion with me, and everyone knows it.”
.. The hosts exchanged furtive glances as they simultaneously began interrupting the president, insisting that they were out of time, even as Trump continued to shout over them. “Right, all right,” Kilmeade said. “All right,” Earhardt interjected. “O.K.” “We’d talk to you all day but it looks like you have a million things to do,” Kilmeade added. Earhardt smiled: “Thank you so much for being with us.”