Trump lawyer met Russian who offered ‘political synergy’

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, was in touch as far back as 2015 with a Russian who offered ``political synergy’’ with the Trump election campaign and proposed a meeting between the candidate and Russian President Vladimir Putin, the federal special counsel said Friday.

Court filings from prosecutors in New York and special counsel Robert Mueller’s office laid out previously undisclosed contacts between Trump associates and Russian intermediaries and suggested the Kremlin aimed early on to influence Trump and his campaign by playing to both his political aspirations and his personal business interests.

The filings, in cases involving Cohen and former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, capped a dramatic week of revelations in Mueller’s probe into possible coordination between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. They bring the legal peril from multiple investigations closer than ever to Trump, tying him to an illegal hush money payment scheme and contradicting his claims that he had nothing to do with Russia.

They make clear how witnesses previously close to Trump — Cohen once declared he’d ``take a bullet’’ for the president — have since provided damaging information about him in efforts to come clean to the government and in some cases get lighter prison sentences.