Cohen dismisses report of Prague meeting with Russian officials
WASHINGTON: Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former attorney, denied Thursday that he had ever visited Prague, shooting down a report that he had a meeting with Russian officials there during the 2016 presidential election campaign.
“I hear üPrague üCzechRepublic is beautiful in the summertime,” Cohen tweeted. “I wouldn’t know as I have never been.
“üMueller knows everything!” he added in a reference to Special Counsel Robert Mueller, the former FBI director who is investigating whether Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia to get him elected to the White House
Cohen’s tweet came several hours after the McClatchy news service reported that cell phone records showed that Cohen was near Prague in the summer of 2016, supporting claims that he met there with Russian officials.
Cohen, who was sentenced to three years in prison this month after pleading guilty to tax evasion and other crimes, had denied previously ever visiting Prague.
Cohen has been cooperating for the past several months with the Special Counsel’s office but details of his cooperation with the Mueller probe have not been publicly revealed.
Trump vehemently denies any collusion with Russia and has denounced the Mueller investigation as a ‘political witch hunt’.
The purported meeting between Cohen and Russian government officials in Prague was first reported in a document with compromising material on Trump compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele.
According to what has become known as the ‘ Steele dossier’, Cohen had a clandestine meeting with Kremlin officials in Prague in August 2016 to discuss hiding links between members of the Trump campaign and Russia.
McClatchy, publisher of the Miami Herald and other newspapers, said a mobile phone traced to Cohen had briefly sent signals off cell towers in the Prague area in late summer 2016.
“The brief activation from Cohen’s phone near Prague sent beacons that left a traceable electronic signature,” it said.
Citing “four people with knowledge of the matter,” McClatchy said that the electronic record supports “claims that Cohen met secretly there with Russian officials.”
“During the same period of late August or early September (2016), electronic eavesdropping by an Eastern European intelligence agency picked up a conversation among Russians, one of whom remarked that Cohen was in Prague,” McClatchy cited ‘ two people familiar with the incident’ as saying.
“The new information regarding the recovery of Cohen’s cell phone location doesn’t explain why he was apparently there or who he was meeting with, if anyone,” McClatchy said. — AFP