Trump ‘ordered Cohen to lie to US Congress’
Model who alleged evidence of collusion arrested in Moscow
US President Donald Trump allegedly told his former personal lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen, to lie to Congress about negotiations to build a Trump Tower in Moscow, BuzzFeed News reported, citing two federal law enforcement officials investigating the incident.
The news site also reported that Trump supported a Cohen plan to visit Russia during the 2016 presidential campaign. Cohen aimed to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss the tower negotiations. BuzzFeed News says Trump told Cohen: “Make it happen”.
BuzzFeed’s sources said that Trump, Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump jnr, received regular updates from Cohen about the project. Trump claimed on the campaign trail that he had no deals with Russia.
The sources told BuzzFeed that Cohen told Robert Mueller, the Special Counsel, that Trump instructed him to lie and claim that negotiations ended months earlier than they did “in order to obscure Trump’s involvement,” the news site reports.
The report hints at the extent of information Mueller has.
“[His] office learned about Trump’s directive for Cohen to lie to Congress through interviews with multiple witnesses from the Trump Organisation and internal company emails, text messages, and a cache of other documents. Cohen then acknowledged those instructions.”
Cohen also reportedly paid a tech expert to rig opinion polls in his boss’s favour. He paid the expert to boost Trump’s standing in two online polls, one on America’s top business leaders and another on potential 2016 presidential candidates, the Wall Street Journal reported.
However, Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s lawyer, disputed that claim, saying: “This is not true. The President did not know about this if it happened.”
Cohen, 52, flipped after pleading guilty to breaking campaign finance laws and fraud. He was sentenced to three years in prison and is set to begin serving that term in March. The man said to have been employed for the work was John Gauger, chief information officer at Liberty University in Virginia. The pair met shortly after Trump gave a speech at the university, according to the newspaper.
Meanwhile, a model from Belarus who claimed to have recordings shedding light on the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia was detained at a Moscow airport yesterday on prostitution allegations, the police said.
The model, Anastasia Vashukevich, had been deported from Thailand after spending nine months in prison on charges of conspiracy and soliciting prostitution.
She was booked to fly to Minsk, Belarus, but was detained along with three others travelling with her as she changed planes at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport, according to her husband and another person travelling with her.
No evidence has emerged of the tape that Vashukevich claimed showed contacts between Trump campaign officials and Russians. Her arrest in Moscow was unexpected and blocked her from possibly talking to dozens of journalists waiting for her in the airport’s arrivals zone.
Gregory Kogan, a close friend of Vashukevich, asserted that Russian and Belarusan diplomats in Thailand had pledged the group would be safe if they left for Russia or flew via Moscow.
The four now face charges of inducement into prostitution. They face a maximum of six years in prison.
Vashukevich became an unlikely figure in the probe into Russian interference in the 2016 US election.
Alexei Navalny, a Russian anticorruption activist, last year highlighted Instagram videos from 2016 apparently showing her on a yacht with Russian metals magnate Oleg Deripaska and a Russian deputy prime minister.
Soon after her apparent connection to Deripaska came to light, Vashukevich and several Russians were arrested while conducting what she described as a sex training seminar. In jail, she said she had recordings revealing ties between Russia and Trump. Deripaska used to work with Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort.
She and her co-defendants pleaded guilty in a Thai court, clearing the way for them to be deported.