Ex-Trump lawyer Cohen pleads guilty to lying
Mueller probe homes in on president’s Russian business dealings
Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer, pleaded guilty Thursday in federal court in New York to lying to Congress about plans to build a Trump Tower in Russia.
The plea marked a major new development in Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Court documents filed as part of the plea deal detailed Trump’s business dealings in Russia that he long minimized and that lasted longer during his campaign than previously acknowledged.
Trump on Thursday called Cohen “a weak person” and said even if his testimony were true, it was perfectly legal for him to negotiate a real-estate deal while campaigning.
“He’s a weak person and not a very smart person,” Trump said. “Even if he
was right, it doesn’t matter. I was running my business.”
Mueller signed Cohen’s deal. On Monday, Mueller voided a plea deal with Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman, over repeated lying to investigators. Manafort has a hearing Friday to get a possible sentencing date for charges of conspiracy and obstruction of justice for representing a pro-Russia faction in Ukraine.
Cohen pleaded guilty to a single count of lying to Congress about a Trump Tower development project in Moscow, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan.
Federal prosecutors said Cohen lied when he submitted an Aug. 28, 2017, letter to the Senate and House intelligence committees. The letter said the project had ended by January 2016, when planning continued months longer during the presidential campaign.
Prosecutors said that Cohen lied to the committees to “minimize links between the Moscow Project and (Trump) and give the false impression that the Moscow Project ended before the Iowa caucus and the very first primary in hopes of limiting the ongoing Russia investigations.”
Cohen also pleaded guilty in August to eight counts related to providing hush money to two women who claimed to have had sex with Trump. But that case was handled by federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, rather than by Mueller’s team.
Jens David Ohlin, a criminal-law expert who is vice dean of Cornell Law School, said Cohen’s plea offers a motive for Trump’s repeated deference to Russia.
“The motive is money and business deals,” Ohlin said. “This gives Mueller the last piece of the puzzle.”
Cohen faced a maximum of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine for lying to Congress, but the plea agreement called for a sentence up to six months and a fine up to $9,500.
Thursday’s court appearance came after Cohen had long sought to shield the Trump Organization’s involvement in the Moscow project throughout the campaign, and while Trump has repeatedly denied that he had any business interests in Moscow in the run-up to the election.
Cohen’s guilty plea centers on false statements he made to the committees, asserting that discussions related to the Moscow project had ended in January 2016. In fact, according to court documents, the project discussions continued well into Trump’s presidential campaign.
“As late as approximately June 2016, Cohen … discussed the status and progress of the Moscow Project with (Trump) on more than the three occasions,” according to a court filing.
In the midst of the campaign, while Cohen was still at work on the proposed Moscow Trump Tower project, Trump emphatically denied any such interests in an interview with a Florida television station.
“I mean I have nothing to do with Russia,” Trump said. “I don’t have any jobs in Russia. I’m all over the world, but we’re not involved in Russia.”
But Trump first traveled to Moscow in the 1980s, to discuss renovating hotels there. After several bankruptcies made it hard to raise money in the United States for his high-end hotel and condominium projects since the 1990s, Trump, and later his children, traveled to Moscow to talk deals and attract buyers, according to interviews with people who have worked with Trump over the years and news accounts.
In a separate report, BuzzFeed News said The Trump Organization planned to offer a $50 million penthouse suite to Russian President Vladimir Putin amid negotiations over a real estate deal to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.
The report includes Felix Sater, a longtime Donald Trump associate, telling BuzzFeed News that he and Cohen thought giving the suite to Putin could help sell other apartments.
“In Russia, the oligarchs would bend over backwards to live in the same building as Vladimir Putin,” Sater told BuzzFeed News. “My idea was to give a $50 million penthouse to Putin and charge $250 million more for the rest of the units. All the oligarchs would line up to live in the same building as Putin.”
BuzzFeed notes other unnamed officials confirmed the existence of the plan and the officials said Cohen discussed the idea with a representative of Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s press secretary.