Cohen says Trump tried for meeting
Putin approach during campaign
WASHINGTON: United States President Donald Trump secretly authorised his longtime lawyer Michael Cohen to try to arrange a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in New York just three months after Trump had announced his White House bid, according to new disclosures from special counsel Robert S. Mueller III on Saturday.
The proposed meeting between the real estate mogul and the Russian leader, who was visiting New York for the UN General Assembly in September 2015, did not take place. It’s unclear whether Russian authorities considered the offer, which Cohen made in a radio interview.
Two months later, Cohen spoke with a Russian national who claimed to be a ‘‘trusted person’’ in the Russian Federation. The person, who was not named in the court document, offered Trump’s campaign ‘‘political synergy’’ and repeatedly proposed a meeting between Trump and Putin.
The Russian said a meeting with Putin would have a ‘‘phenomenal’’ impact not only on Trump’s political career ‘‘but in a business dimension as well’’, which prosecutors said was Trump’s decadeslong effort to build a luxury hotel and condominium tower in Moscow.
Whether the offer for collaboration with Moscow was genuine isn’t known. Cohen did not pursue it because, prosecutors said, he already was working with another person ‘‘who Cohen understood to have his own connections to the Russian government.’’
The previously unknown interactions flesh out how Trump’s personal financial interests repeatedly collided with his unconventional presidential campaign, the latest data points for the special counsel investigation into whether Trump or his aides assisted Russian interference in the 2016 election.
The Trump Tower Moscow project could have generated ‘‘hundreds of millions of dollars from Russian sources in licensing fees and other revenues’’ for the Trump Organisation, the holding company for Trump family businesses, prosecutors wrote, estimating the project’s potential value for the first time.
The company, they added, ‘‘sought and likely required’’ Russian government assistance to build the Moscow tower.
The fact that Cohen discussed it with Trump ‘‘well into the campaign’’ was significant, prosecutors said, ‘‘particularly because it occurred at a time of sustained efforts by the Russian government to interfere with the US presidential election.’’
The details were revealed in a sevenpage sentencing memo for Cohen, who has cooperated with Mueller’s office after pleading guilty to several crimes involving the president.
Cohen, who long served as Trump’s selfdescribed fixer and as an executive vicepresident in the Trump Organisation, admitted last month to lying to two congressional committees about pursuing the Moscow deal during the campaign. He said he was trying to shield the president from more scrutiny.
Cohen is scheduled to be sentenced Thursday in New York.
Cohen recently admitted to pursuing the Moscow project until after Trump clinched the Republican nomination, when it was shelved. About then, US intelligence officials concluded, the Russian operation began to focus on boosting Trump’s ultimately successful candidacy.
Mueller hinted that Cohen had provided additional details, not yet publicly disclosed, about Trump and Russia, saying he had shared ‘‘useful information concerning certain discrete Russiarelated matters core to (the special counsel) investigation’’ into potential coordination between Trump’s campaign and Moscow.
Cohen is also a key figure in another federal investigation involving the president and hush money paid to Stormy Daniels, a porn star, and Karen McDougal, a former Playboy playmate. Both were paid to stay quiet during the campaign about their alleged affairs with Trump.
Prosecutors at the US attorney’s office in Manhattan, which is handling that case, wrote that Cohen ‘‘acted in coordination with and at the direction of Individual1,’’ a reference to Trump.
Cohen also pleaded guilty to tax evasion and bank fraud involving his taxi business and various mortgages.