Trump Moscow Real Estate Talks Continued Into Presidential Run, Documents Show
Donald Trump's longtime attorney Michael Cohen continued negotiations about a potential Trump Tower project in Moscow well into the 2016 presidential campaign, Cohen acknowledged in a guilty plea in federal court on Thursday.
Cohen admitted that he lied to Congress last year when he said those discussions had ended in January of 2016 and that his overtures to the Russian government went unrequited.
In fact, the talks continued through June, and Cohen did hear back from one of Russian President Vladimir Putin's top aides, spokesman Dmitry Peskov, according to court documents.
Trump told reporters at the White House on Thursday that Cohen is lying — but that even if he weren't lying, the president said he hadn't broken any law.
"There would be nothing wrong if I did do it," he said.
Trump said his pledge not to conclude new deals only applied after he had been elected and inaugurated.
The new timeline established by Cohen's plea means that the Trump camp's talks with Russians and the Russian government were ongoing as Trump continued to gain ground in the Republican primaries and not long before he was formally nominated as the party's standard-bearer.
Cohen's acknowledgement also means that the negotiations with Russians were taking place the same month as a much-discussed meeting in New York City at which the president's top campaign aides hosted a Russian delegation that offered dirt on Hillary Clinton.
Trump and his son, Donald Trump Jr., have admitted they went into the meeting expecting material that would be useful against their opponent but said that is common practice in politics and that nothing came from it.
According to accounts from people in the meeting, given to Congress and elsewhere, the Russians provided a tip about people they said were improperly funneling money to the Democratic National Committee.
Trump Jr. has said he did not take any action based on that tip.
The question about what Trump knew about that meeting specifically and generally about Russia's wave of active measures against the U.S. is at the heart of the investigation being run by Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller.
Trump has denied publicly he had any knowledge at the time and he said as much in written answers recently to Mueller's office, according to reports on Wednesday. [Copyright 2018 NPR]
