MICHAEL COHEN’S CONFESSIONS TO DEAL TRUMP CAMP QUITE A BLOW
WASHINGTON: Revelations by Michael Cohen, who has worked as a lawyer and fixer for Donald Trump, continued to reverberate even as the US president participated in the G-20 summit in Argentina.
Cohen’s confessions have spawned more tell-tale disclosures related to a proposed Trump Tower in Moscow that never reached the draughtsman’s board.
One report suggested that Cohen and an associate, Russian-born Felix Sater, had considered gifting a $50 million penthouse in the tower to Russian President Vladimir Putin in a move to attract wealthy buyers.
Another report said Cohen and Sater had enlisted a former Russian military intelligence general to help with the deal.
Yet another report indicated that special counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating possible Russian interference in the 2016 election, has been asking uncomfortable questions about yet another Russian project that was pursued by the US president’s eldest daughter and adviser Ivanka Trump and his eldest son Donald Trump Jr.
Their effort reportedly ended in 2013, much before their father entered the race for the White House.
The three reports, by BuzzFeed News, The New York Times and Yahoo Finance respectively, did not point to any direct role by the US president. They didn’t claim that he had any knowledge of the moves.
Till the filing of this report, they had not been confirmed or denied by the administration, the Trump Organization and Cohen’s lawyer.
These reports and the related developments in the Russiameddling probe cast a shadow on the US president’s G-20 visit.
Earlier, before leaving for Buenos Aires, Trump had dismissed Cohen’s admissions as lies intended to earn a lesser jail term and sought to portray the Moscow project as a business proposition that he decided not to pursue so that he could focus on the presidential run.
Cohen, who had once vowed to take a bullet for Trump, set the ball rolling last Thursday, admitting in a court filing by Mueller to lying to congress about when the Moscow project was terminated and how much Trump, identified as “Individual 1”, knew of it.
Negotiations about the project were underway till at least June 2016, way past January 2016, which he had earlier told a congressional committee was when it was terminated. Also, he had more than three conversations about it with Trump, and had also kept Trump Jr and Ivanka in the loop.