Lawyer close to Trump tells House no dice
Attorney won’t submit files for probe on Russian links
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen, has received and rejected a request for documents as part of Congress’ ongoing investigation into Russia’s possible election meddling and its contacts with the Trump campaign.
Cohen, a longtime attorney for the Trump Organization, remains a personal lawyer for Trump. He served as a cable television surrogate for the Republican during the presidential campaign.
The House Intelligence Committee’s request for information from Cohen came as the investigators continue to scrutinize members of Trump’s inner circle.
The president’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, has received subpoenas from the Senate Intelligence Committee regarding his Russian contacts and his business records. Rep. Adam Schiff, D- Calif., said last week that a subpoena from the House panel was likely.
“I declined the invitation to participate, as the request was poorly phrased, overly broad and not capable of being answered,” Cohen said. “I find it irresponsible and improper that the request sent to me was leaked by those working on the committee.”
Earlier Tuesday, The Associated Press reported, citing a congressional aide, that the
House intelligence committee had subpoenaed Cohen. The aide later retracted the statement. Cohen said that if he is subpoenaed, he will comply.
Cohen told ABC News on Tuesday that he had been asked by both the House and Senate intelligence committees to provide information and testimony about contacts he had with Russian officials.
Cohen’s ties with Russian interests came up in February when The New York Times reported that Cohen helped to broker a Ukraine peace plan that would call for Russian troops to withdraw from Ukraine and a referendum to let Ukrainians decide whether the part of the country seized by Russia in 2014 should be leased to Moscow. The Russian government denied knowing anything about such a plan.
Also on Tuesday, the AP said it had learned that Flynn will provide documents requested by the Senate committee.
Flynn will turn over documents related to two of his businesses as well as some personal documents the committee requested earlier this month, a person close to Flynn said. Flynn plans to produce documents by next week. The person spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss Flynn’s private interactions with the committee.
The decision Tuesday was the first signal that Flynn and the Senate panel have found common ground. Flynn had previously invoked his Fifth Amendment protection against self- incrimination in declining
an earlier request from the committee. Flynn’s attorneys had argued the initial request was too broad and would have required Flynn to turn over information that could have been used against him.
In response, the Senate panel narrowed the scope of its request. It also issued subpoenas seeking records from Flynn’s businesses.
One of the businesses, Flynn Intel Group Inc., did consulting work for a Turkish businessman that required Flynn to register with the Justice Department as a foreign agent earlier this year. The other, Flynn Intel Group LLC, was used to accept money from Flynn’s paid speeches. Among the payments was more than $ 33,000 Flynn received from RT, the Russian state- sponsored television network that U. S. intelligence officials have branded as a propaganda arm of the Kremlin.
On Tuesday, a person close to Flynn said he will turn over documents related to the two businesses, as well as some personal documents the committee sought in the narrower request.
Boris Epshteyn said in a statement that the committee had asked him to volunteer information. He has asked the committee questions to better understand what information it is seeking and will determine whether he can reasonably provide it. Epshteyn, who grew up in Moscow, worked a short time in the White House press office. He left in March and now is a political analyst for right- leaning Sinclair Broadcasting.
At the same time, congressional Democrats don’t want Trump to forget the day he
met with top Russian diplomats at the White House.
They’re peppering the president’s national security team with questions about the damage Trump may have done by sharing top- secret intelligence with the Russians on May 10.
“When you deal with sensitive intelligence, you can’t be unscripted,” Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said last week of Trump’s apparently spur- of-the-moment decision.
The intelligence about a specific Islamic State threat that Trump disclosed to the Russians that was said to have been gathered by Israel, apparently violating the confidentiality of an intelligence- sharing agreement. The president’s action also raised fears that other countries would think twice before confiding in the U. S.
But Trump has rejected the criticism, arguing he has “an absolute right” as president to share information with Russia and other countries.
Presidents are in fact legally empowered to classify and declassify information at their discretion. Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, a former Republican senator selected by Trump for the post, appeared unconcerned about Trump’s disclosure during an Armed Services Committee hearing last week.
Coats said he’d been traveling and hadn’t spoken to Trump about his Oval Office meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russia’s ambassador to the U. S., Sergey Kislyak.
“Well, I wasn’t in the room and I don’t know what the president shared,” Coats said in response to a question from Sen. Martin Heinrich, D- N. M., who also is a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Heinrich called Coats’ answer troubling.
Heinrich, joined by Sens. Gary Peters, D- Mich., and Tom Carper, D- Delaware, wrote to Coats before last week’s hearing and asked him to formally determine whether the president revealed secret information. If the answer is yes, they want Coats to order a review of the potential damage to national security. They also wants Coats to describe how exactly “the disclosure or compromise occurred.”
TRUMP AND PUTIN
Trump tweeted on Tuesday: “Russian officials must be laughing at the U. S. & how a lame excuse for why the Dems lost the election has taken over the Fake News.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed, saying the allegations of Moscow meddling in the U. S. presidential election are “fiction” invented by the Democrats in order to explain their loss. In an interview with French newspaper Le Figaro, Putin reaffirmed his denial of Russian involvement in the hacking of Democratic emails. The interview was recorded during Putin’s Monday trip to Paris and released Tuesday.
This isn’t the first time Trump has ignored the intelligence community’s collective conclusion that Russia tried to interfere in last year’s election
and painted the issue as simply a conspiracy theory invented by Democrats. But this tweet comes as the media continues to report on contacts between Russia and Trump associates, including his son- in- law, Jared Kushner, one of Trump’s most trusted advisers.
The Washington Post reported Friday that Kushner and Russia’s ambassador to the United States discussed the possibility of setting up a secret and secure communications channel between Trump’s transition team and the Kremlin, using Russian diplomatic facilities in an apparent move to shield their pre- inauguration discussions from monitoring.
Later in the day, the president re- tweeted a message from Fox News’s Fox & Friends morning show that linked to a news article lacking an author and citing one unnamed source who challenged details of the Post’s reporting.
FOX & Friends tweeted: Jared Kushner didn’t suggest Russian communications channel in meeting, source says.
But even as Trump and his inner circle try to dismiss the leaks as “fake news,” Russia seems to be taking them seriously. In Moscow, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov complained that “the threat of leaks” from the White House undermines cooperation between the two countries. He claimed the Kremlin is now conducting only “basic level” exchanges with the Trump administration out of worry about leaking.