Kremlin says it got the Trump Tower email but didn’t respond

MOSCOW — A spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin confirmed on Wednesday that he had received a request for assistance on a stalled Trump Tower real estate project in Moscow from a close aide to President Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign, but added that the Kremlin did not respond to the letter.

“I confirm that among a number of emails one from Mr. Michael Cohen came to us, this indeed happened,” said Dmitry Peskov, a personal spokesman for Putin, during a telephone briefing with Russian and foreign journalists. “But as far as we don’t respond to business topics, this is not our job, we did not send a response.”

The stalled deal as described to congressional investigators by Cohen, a close aide to Trump since 2007 who now serves as one of his personal lawyers, was for a licensing project between Trump and a Moscow-based developer called I.C. Expert Investment Co. According to Cohen, Trump signed a letter of intent with the company in October 2015, but added that the project was later abandoned for “business reasons.”

Peskov said that the email described a “Russian company together with certain people had the goal of creating a new skyscraper in Moscow city, but the deal is not moving forward, and they were asking for some recommendations and help advancing this deal.”

Peskov said that he had seen the email but that it was not given to Putin.

The email was sent in midJanuary 2016 shortly before the first Republican Party primaries, as Trump stood out on the campaign trail for his warm rhetoric about the Russian president. It is one of a number of contacts between Trump associates and Russian officials that have become the subject of congressional inquiries and an investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller exploring Russian interference in the 2016 election.