A Clear Link Between Trump and Russia Is Now Out in the Open
A new Mueller court filing describes how Michael Cohen negotiated with the Kremlin about a Moscow business deal during the 2016 campaign.
By Noah Feldman November 29, 2018, 11:30 AM CST
The key revelation of Michael Cohen’s new guilty plea is this: Justice Department Special Counsel Robert Mueller is one step closer to showing links between Donald Trump’s business interests in Russia and his conduct as a candidate for president.
The criminal information filed by Mueller’s prosecutors in the Southern District of New York states that in a period that lasted until the middle of June, 2016, Cohen asked the press secretary to Russian President Vladimir Putin for a meeting with Putin in Russia as part of a deal that would have led to a Trump Tower being built in Moscow.
And according to the document, Cohen spoke to Trump about the deal more than three times during that period, and asked both Trump and other senior campaign officials about a Trump trip to Russia in connection with the deal.
Cohen is pleading guilty to lying to Congress by saying these negotiations had ended by January 2016 and by denying that he spoke to Trump about them.
But the main takeaway is that Cohen and others in the Trump organization were actively doing a Russia deal that linked Trump’s emerging presidential candidacy with his business interest in a Moscow Trump Tower.
And Trump knew about it, to a degree yet to be revealed.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-11-29/mueller-and-michael-cohen-bring-trump-russia-link-into-the-open
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