Russia dangled plums to tempt Trump: Mueller
Russians set a series of political and financial traps for President Trump early in his campaign, enticing his fixer with promises of “political synergy” and Vladimir Putin's rubber stamp on a Trumpbranded tower in Moscow, special counsel Robert Mueller charged Friday.
In an explosive sentencing memo recommending Trump's ex-lawyer and allaround fixer Michael Cohen (photo) spend upwards of five years in prison, Mueller outlined new details about the Kremlin's eagerness to seduce Trump's campaign to sway the 2016 election.
Already in November 2015, a “trusted person in the Russian Federation” spoke to Cohen about setting up a meeting between Putin and the soon-to-be American commander-in-chief, Mueller said.
“The person told Cohen that such a meeting could have a ‘phenomenal' impact ‘not only in political but in a business dimension as well,'” the special counsel's office said in the long-awaited memo outlining Cohen's cooperation in the investigation into possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign.
The mysterious Russian, who has not been previously mentioned over the course of Mueller's probe, told Cohen “synergy” with the Kremlin would immensely sweeten Trump's political aspirations as well as his hopes to build a luxury tower in the Russian capital, according to the special counsel.
“Because there is ‘no bigger warranty in any project than consent of (President Putin),'” the person told Cohen, according to the special counsel.
An actual sit-down never materialized, but Mueller's team said the discussion was but one of several “attempts by Russian nationals to reach the campaign.”
The previously first known contact between Russian operatives and Trump campaign officials was between a Kremlin-connected professor and ex-foreign policy aide George Papadopoulos, who was released from prison Friday after serving a 12-day sentence for lying to the FBI about those talks.
While Mueller deemed Cohen's cooperation in the Russia probe significant, prosecutors recommended a judge still gives him a “substantial” prison sentence because he wasn't as forthcoming about some of his own crimes, including the tax and bank fraud charges he has been convicted of. Cohen is due to be sentenced Wednesday and federal guidelines recommend he serve between roughly four and five years.
Trump — seemingly ignoring that the damning sentencing memo also implicates him in campaign finance crimes relating to salacious hush money payments — claimed vindication.
“Totally clears the President. Thank you!” Trump tweeted. Rudy Giuliani, Trump's current lawyer, lauded the recommendation.
“What I do know is that Michael Cohen is a big, fat liar and he deserves to go to prison for a long time," Giuliani told the Daily News.
Mueller's team also filed papers Friday explaining last month's sudden collapse of a cooperation agreement with former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.
The heavily-redacted document alleges the alreadyimprisoned Manafort has lied repeatedly since copping a plea deal in September about his contacts with administration officials and meetings he took with Konstantin Kilimnik, a suspected Russian intelligence operative.
They also said Manafort lied about a $125,000 payment to a firm owned by a friend.