Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer, pleaded guilty on Thursday to lying to Congress about his role in negotiating a failed deal to build a Trump Tower in Moscow during the 2016 presidential campaign.
This directly contradicts Donald Trump Jr.'s September 2017 testimony to Congress that his family's real estate negotiations with Russians concluded without result "at the end" of 2014.
Here’s how Cohen’s guilty plea fits into special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.
Cohen, who’s cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller, kept discussing the Moscow project for longer than he’d admitted and asked Trump about the possibility of traveling to Russia “in connection with the Moscow Project.” And Cohen spoke at least once with the personal assistant to Dmitri Peskov, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, according to Mueller.
Contrary to Cohen’s claim that the Trump Organization had abandoned the potential deal by January 2016, Cohen and Felix Sater - a Russian immigrant and a former broker for the Trump Organization - were still talking about getting Russian government approval for the project “as late as approximately June 2016.”
Cohen discussed the project with Trump more than the three times he’d claimed and also briefed Trump family members on the project.
Trump has said repeatedly that he has no business ties to Russia. “I HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH RUSSIA - NO DEALS, NO LOANS, NO NOTHING!” he tweeted days before his inauguration.
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