“Well I told you, General Flynn obviously was dealing [with Russia]. So that’s one person. But he was dealing, as he should have been. . . . Russia is a ruse. I have nothing to do with Russia. Haven’t made a phone call to Russia in years. Don’t speak to people from Russia. I have nothing to do with Russia. To the best of my knowledge, no person that I deal with does.”
— President Trump, in a news conference, on Feb. 16, 2017
Trump announced he was running for president in June 2015. He spent the next several months on the campaign trail in advance of the Iowa caucuses in February 2016.
At the same time, Cohen was working toward a deal that would license Trump’s name to a skyscraper in Moscow. According to court documents, Cohen updated Trump and Trump’s family on the project more than three times between September 2015 and June 2016, but it is not clear exactly when these briefings took place. The timeline below outlines how the campaign and the Moscow project intersected.
.. According to The Washington Post, “an unidentified investor planned to build the project and, under a licensing agreement, put Trump’s name on it.” Sater believed that, with Trump’s publicity from the campaign, it would be perfect timing. He began to contact former contacts in Russia and put together a licensing deal for the Moscow project fairly quickly.
Oct. 28: Trump personally signed the letter of intent for the Moscow project. This was the same day as the third Republican debate.
.. Jan. 14-16, 2016: Cohen emailed Dmitry Peskov, a top aide and spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, to enlist his help “to secure land and permits,” according to documents submitted to Congress.
.. Jan. 20: Cohen heard back from Peskov’s office and spoke with his assistant for 20 minutes. During that call, according to court documents, Cohen outlined the Moscow project and asked for assistance to move it forward. Cohen initially told Congress that he had never heard back from Peskov. Peskov corroborated this false claim in August 2017when he said he had received an email but “left it unanswered.” (After Cohen’s new admission, Peskov displayed the emails to reporters and confirmed that Russian officials contacted Cohen by phone.)
.. “Michael had a lengthy substantive conversation with the personal assistant to a Kremlin official following his outreach in January 2016, engaged in additional communications concerning the project as late as June 2016, and kept [Trump] apprised of these communications,” according to a sentencing memorandum filed by Cohen’s team.
On Feb. 1, Trump finishes second in the Iowa caucuses.
.. Spring 2016: “[Cohen] and [Trump] also discussed possible travel to Russia in the summer of 2016, and Michael took steps to clear dates for such travel,” according to the memorandum filed by Cohen’s team. Cohen also discussed this “potential business travel to Russia” with a senior campaign official, according to court documents.
.. On May 3, Trump becomes the presumptive nominee for the Republican Party after Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, Trump’s remaining challengers, withdraw from the contest.
.. May 4-6: Cohen and Sater discuss the possibility of a trip to Russia that would include Trump. They debate whether it would be better for him to visit before or after the Republican National Convention in July. On May 5, Sater relays a message that a Russian official would like to invite Cohen to the “Davos of Russia” in June where he would be introduced to Putin and/or Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. Cohen agrees to the trip. According to the sentencing memorandum filed by Cohen’s team, he continued to update Trump through June.
.. May 21: Then-advisers Carter Page and George Papadopoulos suggest to the campaign that Trump travel to Russia. Papadopoulos forwards a May 4 email exchange to newly minted campaign chairman Paul Manafort, saying, “Russia has been eager to meet Mr. Trump for quite some time and have been reaching out to me to discuss.” Manafort then forwards this email to his deputy, Rick Gates, writing, “We need someone to communicate that DT is not doing these trips.” Gates agreed and passed the exchange along to “the person responding to all mail of non-importance,” aiming to avoid a response from a senior official.
.. June 3: Rob Goldstone, a music publicist, emails Donald Trump Jr., offering “very high level and sensitive information” that could “incriminate Hillary” and is part of “Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.” Goldstone represents Emin Agalarov, whose father is a major real estate developer close to Putin. Agalarov asks Goldstone to pass this along for his father, who was offered the information by the “Crown prosecutor of Russia.” Trump Jr. promptly responds: “If it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer.”
June 7: Trump promises a “major speech about Hillary Clinton’s crimes.”
June 9: Trump Jr., Manafort and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner meet with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya and others at Trump Tower. At least eight people attend this meeting, including two other Russian associates. Since the meeting was first reported, reports have surfaced that Veselnitskaya may have been working on behalf of the Kremlin at that time.
June 7: Trump promises a “major speech about Hillary Clinton’s crimes.”
June 9-14: Sater tried to contact Cohen to confirm his upcoming trip to Russia. Court documents say Sater sent “multiple messages” to Cohen and “included forms” for him to complete.
On June 14, The Washington Post reveals the Democratic National Committee had been hacked. The following day, the DNC and CrowdStrike, the firm hired by the DNC to investigate the hack, said, “Two separate Russian intelligence-affiliated adversaries present in the DNC network in May 2016.”
June 14: Cohen met Sater in the lobby of Trump Tower to inform him that he would not “be traveling at [that] time.” Cohen had initially agreed to a trip to St. Petersburg in June.
June 15: Trump releases a statement: “We believe it was the DNC that did the ‘hacking’ as a way to distract from the many issues facing their deeply flawed candidate and failed party leader. Too bad the DNC doesn’t hack Hillary Clinton’s 33,000 missing emails.”
On July 21, Trump officially becomes the Republican nominee for president. The next day, WikiLeaks releases nearly 20,000 DNC emails obtained through Russian hacking operations. U.S. officials have said Russian intelligence used intermediaries to give the email cache to WikiLeaks.
.. July 21-27: In several television appearances, tweets and a news conference, Trump and his campaign officials deny any connections to Russia, despite previous and ongoing meetings and communications.
- July 24: “Are there any ties between Mr. Trump, you or your campaign and Putin and his regime?” George Stephanopoulos asked Manafort on ABC News’s “This Week.”“No, there are not,” Manafort says. “It’s absurd, and there’s no basis to it.”
- July 24: In an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Jake Tapper asked Trump Jr. about the suggestion that Russians had hacked the DNC network to help Trump and hurt Clinton. Trump Jr. calls the claims “lies.”
- July 25: Trump responds: “The new joke in town is that Russia leaked the disastrous DNC e-mails, which should never have been written (stupid), because Putin likes me.”
- July 26: Trump tweeted “For the record, I have ZERO investments in Russia.”
- July 27: Trump said, “What do I have to do with Russia? You know the closest I came to Russia, I bought a house a number of years ago in Palm Beach.”
.. Sater told BuzzFeed that after Trump’s July 26 tweet, he knew the deal was off.
Oct. 9: During the second debate with Clinton, Trump says: “I know about Russia, but I know nothing about the inner workings of Russia. I don’t deal there. I have no businesses there. I have no loans from Russia.”
Oct. 26: During a campaign rally in Kinston, N.C., Trump declares: “First of all, I don’t know Putin, have no business whatsoever with Russia, have nothing to do with Russia.”
.. Jan. 11, 2017: Trump tweets: “Russia has never tried to use leverage over me. I HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH RUSSIA – NO DEALS, NO LOANS, NO NOTHING!” In a news conference that day, Trump says: “I tweeted out that I have no dealings with Russia. I have no deals that could happen in Russia because we’ve stayed away. And I have no loans with Russia.”
May 11: In an interview with Lester Holt of NBC News, Trump says: “I am not involved in Russia. No loans. No nothing.”
Aug. 27: The Washington Post reports for the first time that when Trump was running for president, his company pursued a plan to develop a massive Trump Tower in Moscow.
.. Nov. 29, 2018: After the announcement of Cohen’s guilty plea, Trump tells reporters: “He’s lying about a project that everybody knew about. I mean, we were very open with it. … This deal was a very public deal. Everybody knows about this deal. I wasn’t trying to hide anything.”
That’s false because it was not disclosed until The Washington Post report in August 2017, almost one year after the election.
.. Dec. 2: Reporters from the Associated Press asked Trump about his relationship with Sater. Trump said, “Felix Sater, boy, I have to even think about it. I’m not familiar with him.”
Comments:
M Bovary
Of all the lies this man tells, this is a whopper and so easily disproved. Sater had an office in Trump tower and traveled with Trump on his private jet to various meetings.
Trump thinks the rest of the world is stupid.
.. 8767dghy
Trump was born with every economic advantage in the world and could have chosen to have a multitude of honest careers. He, however, made the deliberate choice to earn his living by conning and frauding *marks*. This fact speaks volumes about type of person he is... So Tired of WinningTrump may have not been aware that, after being convicted of money laundering, Sater became an FBI informant. I doubt Sater stopped being FBI informant as soon as he got involved with Trump tower in Moscow. Sater could have been the primary source of the scoop on Trump and Cohen that led to the raid on Cohen’s office last spring... msmcdougalFrom the date he announced thru 6/14/16, he was actively pursuing his Russian project behind the scenes, and at the same time he was going unusually easy on Putin. As a result of the 6/15/16 WP article, he decided he had to stop actively pursuing the project while he1. made sure he won the nomination; and2. saw if he was going to win the election.He never told Russia he was no longer interested; in essence, he put it on pause. In the meantime, he had the platform softened and continued to talk nicey nice about Putin, no doubt because he felt if he lost the election he would get back to this project. At the same time, he minimized his connection with Russia, using terms like, “I have no deals with Russia,” technically true but in reality totally misleading. He also, through his underlings like Flynn, made sure Putin knew that he was a friend if he got elected and he accepted Russia’s help in getting him elected. He was compromised, not necessarily by what Putin had on him, but what he wanted to try to do in Washington or Moscow. He owed this disclosure to the American voters both during the primaries and in the general. He is a traitor... exlrrpHe is indeed a traitor and proved it when he begged Russia to hack Hillary’s emails. The most treasonous quote in American history:
“Russia…..if your listening……I hope you can find Hillary’s emails….that will be next….”
And guess what? The hacking of her emails started THAT day!!. Now how did traitor trump know it was coming if the Russians didnt tell him, directly or indirectly?.. msmcdougalMy take is that at the June 6, 2016 trump Tower meeting, the framework of
- how Russia could help,
- how that help would come and
- how the communication of asking for and getting that help would work was laid out.
The actual info trump had hoped for and had hinted at did not come then, but it was not the nothingburger that liars trump, Junior, Manafort, and Jared said it was. And before we forget, Cohen has already said trump was told in advance about that meeting.
.. KTA-FranceHis whole presidency is about trying to build his “brand” and leverage the position of president, with future real estate deals. Who knows what his sons are doing, what they are promising now as we speak. The Russia deal is just the most obvious of projects/deals he tried to push forward while using his leverage in the WH. Who really knows what else is out there? This has been his whole life… the way he did business. Why would he change now?.. GraybeardscientistAs Obama said of Trump to them (as per my imperfect memory, referring to flyover state citizens):“For years he’s been ignoring you as he flies over your heads in his gold plated jet. What makes you think he’s going to start caring about you now?”
.. LifeInBananaRepublicYou missed Kushner’s proposal to Sergey Kislyak to set up a secret and secure back channel to Russia in the Russian embassy.
Trump-Russia Charges (National Review Commenter)
All discussions of Trump’s crimes which do not deal directly with the facts of June 9th, 2016 are ridiculous blatant attempts at obscuration and deflection of justice and are unbecoming of someone who is interested in the well being of the American Republic.
The truth of Trump’s unfitness and misconduct are legion. All patriots should be praying and advocating for Trump’s impeachment and removal from public office. Below is a partial list of his misconduct around just the meeting in Trump Tower of June 9th, 2016.
Trump lie#1- no contact with Russia, a documented 20 times this lie was repeated before evidence of the meeting became common knowledge in summer 2017
Trump lie#2- Meeting in Trump tower, Donald Trump’s private residence and personal business office, with his son, son in law and murderous campaign manager Paul Manafort was about adoption
Trump lie# 3 – Don jr. in congressional testimony cannot remember who the phone call to a ‘private’ phone number is to that happened minutes after the meeting
Trump Lie#4- when the New York Times gets a hold of Don jr. emails, he releases a statement dictated by his daddy and for months says it is his personal statement, later because it was dictated from Air Force One the communications are recorded, and it is now documented that President Trump lied about the lie
Trump lie# 5 – that only one Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, attended the June, 9th 2016 meeting, the facts are the meeting also included Rinat Akhmetshin, a known Russian intelligence operative and Irakly Kaveladzean an associate/counselor of Aras Agalarov, a Putin connected oligarch.
Trump lie #6- he had no personal knowledge of the meeting, rebutted by the logical inference of Trump’s promises of release dirt at a June 7th, 2016 press conference, two days before the Trump Tower meeting, his own words “I am going to give a major speech on probably Monday of next week and we’re going to be discussing all of the things that have taken place with the Clintons,” and “I think you’re going to find it very informative and very, very interesting. I wonder if the press will want to attend, who knows.”
Trump lie # 7-Trump’s “joke”- “I will tell you this: Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,”-July 27th, 2016 Trump’s own words. The president was encouraging a foreign adversary to illegally hack into messages by a former secretary of state that might contain sensitive information, then release them publicly.
Trump lie#8-he did not know of the meeting until July, 2017, Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen states Trump had fore knowledge and condoned/ encouraged the meeting
Trump lie #9-Helsinki, July 16th, 2018 Trump contradicts the patriots of the intelligence services of the USA and says Russia did not interfere in US election
Trump lie# 10-Washington DC July18th, 2018-Trump when confronted by Vice-President Pence and Secretary of Defense Mattis, says he misspoke and meant to say that Russia “did not, not” interfere in US elections
Trump lie# 11-Bedminster, NJ, July 23rd, 2018, Trump again claims Russia did not interfere
Trump lie# 12-The lie of July 31st, 2018,is that “collusion”is not a crime- the crimes include:
A.-Criminal Conspiracy -18 U.S. Code Chapter 19 – CONSPIRACY-to meet, to plan a crime or profit from an illegal act whether successful or not
B. Conspiracy to Defraud the United States- 18 U.S. Code § 371 – Conspiracy to commit offense or to defraud United States -using dishonest means to deprive the citizens of the USA of a fair election
C. Computer Fraud and abuse act -18 U.S. Code § 1030 – Fraud and related activity in connection with computer -include to use information gained knowing that the information was obtained by criminal enterprise- Jared Kushner and Cambridge Analytica
D. Conspiracy to violate Election laws-52 U.S. Code § 30121 – Contributions and donations by foreign nationals-using in kind and monetary donations from foreign states and aliens and not reporting such
E. Aiding and abetting a crime, such as hacking, even after the act-18 U.S.C. § 2, and 18 U.S.C. § 3, aiding and abetting
F. Suborning perjury-18 U.S. Code § 1622 – Subornation of perjury.
G. Perjury-18 U.S. Code § 1621 – Perjury generally
H. Using public office to obstruct justice-18 U.S. Code Chapter 73 – OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE
The quid pro quo of exchanges was for the Russian state to provide millions of dollars of in kind campaign aide in return American foreign policy would be made to benefit Putin’s designs, specifically in July, 2016, changing the Republican Party platform about stopping the Russian invasion and subversion of Ukraine.
The above partial list does not include the even more serious constitutional crimes that precede the statutory laws of the US:
A. Dereliction of duty- for failure to faithfully enforce Congressional mandated sanctions of Russia
B. Conduct unbecoming a public office
C. Fraternization with hostile forces
As far as Trump’s unjust and vicious character the corruption is legion. Everything from the lies of being a self made billionaire, when he is not a billionaire, but is in fact a trust fund brat who inherited $250-400 million and after 6 bankruptcies, more than 550 companies, and more than 3500 lawsuits for failure to fulfill contract he is documented to be worth $150-250 million. The 19 credible women who accuse him of sexual assault and misconduct, the payoffs to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougall, adulteries which happened while his 3rd consort was recovering from child birth. His 37 appearances on the Howard Stern show where he bragged of being a sexual predator and walking in on women changing their clothes. None is as disqualifying as his violation of the Selective Service Act of 1948.
Among all the perversions and nastiness that is all things Trump the fact that the seed of his family’s fortune came from his pimp grandfather who supported the Kaiser and the German Reich and Trump’s father made the family fortune defrauding the Veterans Administration and part of that money was used to pay for Donald’s medical exemption that allowed him to evade conscription and more than 58,000 sons of America died in Trump’s place. No man who has ever been president has been more disloyal to the values and people of the American Republic than Trump.
Robert Mueller’s Plan
Special Counsel Mueller is building a report, not a case.
The real flaw was the assumption that Special Counsel Mueller is lining up witnesses and building a criminal case, as prosecutors do.
.. He is not.
No prosecutor builds a case the way Mueller is going about it. What prosecutor says, “Here’s our witness line-up: Michael Flynn, George Papadopoulos, Alex van der Zwaan, Rick Gates, Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen. And what is it that they have in common, ladies and gentlemen of the jury? Bingo! They’re all convicted liars.”?
.. This kind of guilty plea signals to the world, including to all the other suspects, that the accomplice is ready to testify that the criminal scheme existed... The accomplice is ready to describe what he did and what everybody else did. Virtually every appellate opinion reviewing conspiracy convictions notes the principle that once a conspiracy is shown to exist, only slight evidence is needed to tie a conspirator to it... Juries do not convict people because they like or trust the prosecution’s witnesses. They convict because they are persuaded that justice demands redress for a real crime... we have stressed that the probe is a counterintelligence investigation, not a criminal investigation. The idea was not to dizzy you with Justice Department esoterica. The point is that we don’t want prosecutors involved until it has been established that a crime was probably committed.. Mueller does not have a crime he is investigating. He is investigating in hopes of finding a crime, which is a day-and-night different thing... collusion pours off every page of the narrative statements Mueller submitted to the courts in the cases of Papadopoulos and Cohen. They consult with Russian operatives, plan meetings for themselves and Trump with Russian officials, and — in Papadopoulos’s case — discuss the possibility of obtaining campaign dirt against Hillary Clinton from Russians. Yet, though these activities are the laser focus of his investigation, Mueller did not charge them as crimes because they are not crimes. Papadopoulos, Cohen, and the rest got jammed up, not for what they did, but for lying about what they did... We know from our own daily lives that crimes account for only a very small percentage of the things people lie about. Indeed, throughout the 1990s, Democrats insisted that prosecutors should leave Bill Clinton alone because everybody lies about sex. People lie about things that they are embarrassed or ashamed about.
.. Successful politics requires horse-trading and compromise, so pols are forever explaining how they could actually be against something they voted for. A lot of this is embarrassing stuff. Consequently, when people in and around politics get caught practicing politics, they often lie about what they’ve done.
.. Politics is not a crime, of course. Consequently, if you criminalize politics — if you turn a prosecutor loose to investigate political campaign activities — you are apt to find unsavory conduct that is not criminal but that some people will lie about.
.. Second, with the media as his biggest cheerleader (other than Jeff Flake), the false-statements pleas create the illusion of a collusion crime, and thus appear to vindicate Mueller’s sprawling investigation... the media omits that no one has been charged, much less convicted, of any crime involving collusion between Trump and Russia... Convicted liars never get cross-examined in a report. Nor do they give the bumpy, inconsistent testimony you hear in a courtroom. Instead, their version of events is outlined by a skilled prosecutor, who writes well and knows how to make their stories sing in perfect harmony... prove that many people Trump brought into his campaign were corruptible and of low character. Mueller, the career Justice Department and FBI man, will deftly use this fact to argue that suspicions about these people, and hence the investigation, were fully justified even if — thankfully — there was no prosecutable Trump–Russia conspiracy... Trump’s Republican and conservative critics will cheer, figuring the president and his rogues’ gallery had it coming. Democrats will cheer, knowing this would never happen to Democrats.
Cohen’s guilty plea suggests Russia has ‘leverage’ over Trump, top Democrat says
Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), the incoming chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said in an appearance on NBC’ News’s “Meet the Press” that Thursday’s guilty plea by Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney, raises the question of whether Russia continues to have leverage over Trump.
.. “Does the Kremlin have a hold on him over other things?” Nadler said. “There certainly was leverage during the campaign period and until recently because they knew he was lying, they knew he had major business dealings or that Cohen on his behalf had major business dealings.”
.. Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) said Sunday that “most Republicans who were about to nominate Donald Trump in the summer of ’16 would probably have thought it was a relevant fact” that Trump was still trying to do business with Russia at the time.
.. “What I find particularly interesting with the revelation of Cohen’s plea is that he’s saying he lied to protect then-candidate Trump’s stories that he had nothing to do with Russia,”
.. “So, the president seemed to already be changing his story a little bit and say, ‘well, it was all legal.’ ”