President Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen says he “conferred” with Trump about setting up a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin during the early part…
President Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen says he “conferred” with Trump about setting up a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin during the early part of the 2016 presidential campaign, according to an explosive document filed Friday by special counsel Robert Mueller in Manhattan.
Initially, Cohen said his September 2015 comments on Sean Hannity’s radio show predicting a “better than likely chance” that Trump would meet Putin that week at the UN General Assembly were “spontaneous and had not been discussed within the campaign.”
But he admitted to prosecutors “that his account was false and that he had in fact conferred with Individual 1,” which is how Trump is identified in court papers.
The meeting didn’t take place.
Trump also schemed with his longtime personal lawyer and fixer to make hush-money payments to a porn star and Playboy model, according to a separate 40-page document filed by Manhattan federal prosecutors Friday.
Trump claimed that the feds’ filings vindicated him.
“Totally clears the President. Thank you!” he tweeted shortly after the report’s release.
But prosecutors gave him no such clearance.
In fact, Mueller said Cohen provided substantial assistance to his team in its probe into Russian interference in the presidential race as well as “useful information concerning his contacts with persons connected to the White House during the 2017-2018 time period.”
Mueller said Cohen also shared information about his own contacts “with Russian interests during the campaign and discussions with others in the course of making those contacts.”
In what appeared to be a new disclosure, Mueller said that around November 2015, Cohen spoke with a Russian national who could offer the campaign “political synergy” and “synergy on a government level.
