‘I did NOT know of the meeting’

President denies Cohen claim he knew of son’s talk in 2016

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump denied Friday that he knew in advance about the June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower, where his son Donald Jr., his son-inlaw, Jared Kushner, and campaign chief Paul Manafort huddled with an attorney with Kremlin ties offering dirt on his opponent, Hillary Clinton.

“NO,” Trump tweeted. “I did NOT know of the meeting with my son, Don jr.”

The president was reacting to a report on CNN that his former attorney, Michael Cohen, alleges that Trump was present when the scheduled meeting was discussed.

That meeting is at the center of the special counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing investigation into possible collusion between Russian officials and Trump’s campaign.

Trump, in his tweet Friday, attacked Cohen, who is now facing a separate criminal investigation in New York and is said to be seeking to make a deal with prosecutors and testify against the president.

“Sounds to me like someone is trying to make up stories in order to get himself out of an unrelated jam (Taxi cabs maybe?),” Trump tweeted. “He even retained Bill and Crooked Hillary’s lawyer. Gee, I wonder if they helped him make the choice!”

Cohen, whose interests in New York’s taxicab industry have come under scrutiny, signaled a break with his former boss weeks ago when he retained a new attorney, Lanny Davis, a Democrat who represented the Clintons in the 1990s. While his private recordings of Trump and others have been seized by investigators, he has not yet produced evidence to support his claim that Trump knew of the Trump Tower meeting.

The FBI months ago raided Cohen’s home, office and hotel room, including in search of documents related to a $130,000 payment the attorney facilitated before the 2016 election to Stormy Daniels, the porn star who says she had sex with Trump in 2006.

Rudy Giuliani, the president’s attorney, trashed Cohen in a television interview on CNN.

“I expected something like this from Cohen,” Giuliani said to CNN’S Chris Cuomo. “He’s been lying all week. He’s been lying for years.”