Lodi News-Sentinel

Cohen reveals Russian outreach attempts in 2016 Trump campaign

- By Chris Megerian and David Willman

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump secretly authorized his longtime lawyer Michael Cohen to try to arrange a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in New York just three months after Trump had announced his White House bid, according to new disclosure­s from special counsel Robert S. Mueller III on Friday.

The proposed meeting between the real estate mogul and the Russian leader, who was visiting New York for the U.N. General Assembly in September 2015, did not take place. It’s unclear whether Russian authoritie­s considered the offer, which Cohen made in a radio interview.

Two months later, Cohen spoke with a Russian national who claimed to be a “trusted person” in the Russian Federation. The person, who was not named in the court document, offered Trump’s campaign “political synergy” and repeatedly proposed a meeting between Trump and Putin.

The Russian said a meeting with Putin would have a “phenomenal” impact not only on Trump’s political career “but in a business dimension as well,” which prosecutor­s said was Trump’s decadeslon­g effort to build a luxury hotel and condominiu­m tower in Moscow.

Whether the offer for collaborat­ion with Moscow was genuine isn’t known. Cohen did not pursue it because, prosecutor­s say, he already was working with another person “who Cohen understood to have his own connection­s to the Russian government.”

The previously unknown interactio­ns flesh out how Trump’s personal financial interests repeatedly collided with his unconventi­onal presidenti­al campaign, the latest data points for the special counsel investigat­ion into whether Trump or his aides assisted Russian interferen­ce in the 2016 election.

The Trump Tower Moscow project could have generated “hundreds of millions of dollars from Russian sources in licensing fees and other revenues” for the Trump Organizati­on, the holding company for Trump family businesses, prosecutor­s wrote, estimating the project’s potential value for the first time.

The company, they added, “sought and likely required” Russian government assistance to build the Moscow tower.

The fact that Cohen discussed it with Trump “well into the campaign” was significan­t, prosecutor­s said, “particular­ly because it occurred at a time of sustained efforts by the Russian government to interfere with the U.S. presidenti­al election.”

The details were revealed in a seven-page sentencing memo for Cohen, who has cooperated with Mueller’s office after pleading guilty to several crimes involving the president.

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