Lawyer says Trump Tower in Russia considered during campaign
WASHINGTON Donald Trump’s personal lawyer confirmed Monday that the president’s company pursued a project in Moscow during the Republican primary, but said that the plan was abandoned “for a variety of business reasons.” The attorney, Michael Cohen, also said he sent an email to the spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin as part of the potential deal.
The confirmation that the Trump Organization was actively considering doing business in Russia during the presidential election could provide special counsel Robert Mueller with motivation for probing Trump’s personal and business finances, a line Trump has warned him not to cross.
Cohen disclosed details of the deal in a statement to the House intelligence committee, which like Mueller is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia. The Associated Press obtained the statement Monday.
In the statement, Cohen said that he worked on the real estate proposal with Felix Sater, a Russia-born associate who he said claimed to have deep connections in Moscow.
The discussions about the potential development occurred in the fall of 2015, months after Trump had declared his candidacy, and ended early last year when Cohen determined that the project was not feasible, according to Cohen’s statement. Cohen also disclosed that Trump was personally aware of the deal, signing a letter of intent and discussing it with Cohen on two other occasions.
In a statement, the Trump Organization emphasized that the licensing deal “was not significantly advanced,” noting that no site or financing materialized during the negotiations. The company also said it was never paid any fees as part of the deal, and the signed letter of intent was nonbinding.
“To be clear, the Trump Organization has never had any real estate holdings or interests in Russia,” the company said. The negotiations of the possible Trump Tower Moscow deal were first reported Sunday night by The Washington Post. On Monday, The New York Times reported on an email in which Sater appeared to boast that the real estate deal could help Trump get elected. Sater did not respond to a request for comment from the AP on Monday. “Our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it,” Sater wrote in an email, according to the Times. “I will get all of Putins team to buy in on this, I will manage this process.”
He also said in another email about a possible ribbon-cutting: “I will get Putin on this program and we will get Donald elected.”
In the two-page statement, Cohen said he emailed Putin’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, after Sater suggested that “the proposal would require approvals within the Russian government that had not been issued.” Cohen said he did not recall any response to his email, or any other contacts with Peskov or other Russian government officials about the project.
Cohen portrayed the proposal as one of “countless” that the Trump Organization has received for developments around the world, noting that Trump had properties and developments in about a dozen different countries.