National Post (National Edition)
Cohen: I lied out of loyalty to ‘Individual 1’
PRESIDENT SAYS HE DID NOTHING WRONG AND CALLS FORMER LAWYER A ‘WEAK PERSON’
President Donald Trump’s former lawyer admitted Thursday he lied to Congress about a Moscow real estate deal he had pursued on Trump’s behalf during the heat of the 2016 Republican campaign, saying he did so to be consistent with Trump’s “political messaging.”
Michael Cohen’s guilty plea makes clear that prosecutors believe that Trump, who insisted throughout the campaign that he had no business dealings in Russia, was continuing to pursue the project weeks after he had clinched the Republican nomination and well after he and his associates have publicly acknowledged.
The negotiations about building a Russian Trump Tower continued as late as June 2016 — the same month Trump’s oldest son met in Manhattan with a Kremlin-connected lawyer — even though Cohen told two congressional committees last year that the talks ended that January.
Cohen also discussed the proposal with Trump on multiple occasions and with unidentified members of the president’s family, according to court papers filed by special counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating Russian interference in the presidential election and possible co-ordination with the Trump campaign. Cohen is co-operating with Mueller and has met with his team seven times, prosecutors say.
Cohen’s guilty plea comes at a perilous time for Trump, whose presidency has been threatened by Cohen’s statements to investigators.
In recent days, the president and his lawyers have increased their attacks on the Justice Department and the special counsel’s office.
After Cohen appeared in New York federal court Thursday, Trump abruptly cancelled a planned meeting with President Vladimir Putin of Russia while both leaders are in Argentina for a world economic summit meeting. The president said he called off the meeting because of Russia’s recent hostilities with Ukraine.
Cohen’s surprise court appearance marks the latest step in his evolution from trusted Trump consigliere — he said Thursday he had lied out of “loyalty” — to prime antagonist. It is the second time the lawyer’s legal woes have entangled Trump, coming months after Cohen said the president directed him during his campaign to make hush money payments to two women who said they had sex with Trump.
Trump on Thursday called Cohen a “weak person” who was lying to get a lighter sentence and repeatedly stressed that the real estate deal at issue was never a secret and never executed. His lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, said that Cohen was a “proven liar” and that Trump’s business organization had voluntarily given Mueller the same documents cited in the guilty plea “because there was nothing to hide.”
“We had a position to possibly do a deal to build a building of some kind in Moscow. I decided not to do it,” Trump said.
He said the primary reason he didn’t pursue it was “I was focused on running for president.” He added: “There would be nothing wrong if I did do it. I was running my business while I was campaigning.”
But during the campaign, Trump was repeatedly dismissive of claims that he had connections to the Kremlin, an issue that flared as especially sensitive in the summer of 2016 after a cybersecurity company asserted that Moscow was behind a cyberattack on the Democratic National Committee.
It was not immediately clear whether questions about the Russian Trump Tower real estate deal were among those answered by Trump and his lawyers last week. But a prior list of queries that Mueller’s team presented to Trump lawyers this year did include a question about it, and Mueller’s team is known to have asked about Trump’s business dealings over the years.
The nine-page charging document for Cohen traces the behind-the-scenes communication about the project that almost became reality in October 2015 when an obscure Russian real estate developer signed a letter of intent sent by Cohen for a 15-floor hotel, condominium and retail complex in Moscow.
Cohen’s comments made clear that his communications with Trump about the project were more frequent than he had suggested. Cohen is to be sentenced Dec. 12, and guidelines call for little to no prison on the new charge.