‘On the precipice of a bombshell’
Cohen’s plea confirms Trump’s inner circle was plotting with Russians
WASHINGTON— Once more, Donald Trump’s Russia crisis has deepened. Once more, his story has shifted.
Anew guilty plea on Thursday by Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer, corporate vicepresident and personal “fix-it guy,” revealed that Trump’s inner circle had direct high-level contact with Vladimir Putin’s Russian government during the 2016 election.
Considering that Trump has repeatedly insisted that he has had “nothing to do with Russia” since 2013, the contents of the plea were significant enough.
More troubling for Trump, though, were the hints in the plea document about what special counsel Robert Mueller might do next.
“What all of this indicates is we’re on the precipice of a bombshell indictment,” said Nick Akerman, a lawyer and former assistant prosecutor on the Watergate scandal.
Cohen made a surprise appearance in a New York court to plead guilty to lying to the U.S. Congress about his pursuit of a Trump hotel project in Moscow.
He said he had falsely told congressional investigators that Trump’s company stopped pursuing the project in January 2016, before the first voting in the Republican presidential primary.
In fact, he admitted, discussions continued until June 2016.
He also admitted that he lied when he said he had not received a response to an email he had sent to the Russian government about the proposal. In fact, he said, an aide to the press secretary for Russian President Vladimir Putin got back to him, and they spoke for 20 minutes.
Legal experts said Mueller’s decision to let Cohen plead to this crime is likely a sign that Mueller knows much more than he has revealed.
Cohen had previously pleaded guilty only to campaign finance crimes related to hush-money payments to women who allege they had sex with the married Trump.
The new plea, Akerman said, establishes Cohen’s knowledge of Trump’s dealings with Russia — and, therefore, sets him up to be a witness in a potential future Russia-related case against people more directly involved in Trump’s campaign. Cohen, who once said he would take a bullet for Trump, has been co-operating extensively with Mueller.
“This new charge puts Cohen right at the centre of the storm here in terms of Mueller’s central mission, which is to determine whether the Trump campaign conspired with the Russian government,” Akerman said.
One of the people who might be at risk from Cohen is the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr.
The plea document says Cohen “briefed family members” of Trump on the Moscow project. Trump Jr. testified that he was only “peripherally aware” of the project.
“Trump Jr’s disturbingly disingenuous statements to the Judiciary Committee now raise serious questions after Cohen guilty plea and require further scrutiny,” Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal said on Twitter.
Trump responded to Cohen’s decision with some of his usual attacks, calling him “weak” and accusing him of “lying.”
But, in a marked change from his regular rhetoric, he also attempted to provide justifications for the dealings Cohen described.
“Now, here’s the thing: even if he was right, it doesn’t matter, because I was allowed to do whatever I wanted during the campaign,” he told reporters. There would be “nothing wrong,” he added, if he had decided to make a big development deal with Russia during the campaign.
“There was a good chance that I wouldn’t have won, in which case I would have gotten back into the business. And why should I lose lots of opportunities?” he said.
Just an hour after suggesting to reporters he still wanted to meet with Putin at the G20 summit in Argentina, Trump cancelled the meeting via Twitter. He cited Russia’s latest aggression against Ukraine, where Ukrainian vessels were seized.
Mueller announced the plea just a week after Trump’s lawyers announced they had submitted the president’s written responses to his questions, leading to speculation that Trump could have been caught perjuring himself had he not answered truthfully about the Moscow project.
Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, however, told the New York Times that Trump’s answers aligned with Cohen’s story.
After a relative lull in Trump’s attacks on Mueller, he had escalated these in the days leading up to the announcement.
On Wednesday, he retweeted an image showing Mueller and the man who appointed him, Trump-appointed Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, behind bars for “treason.”