Michael Cohen pleaded guilty in Mueller probe to lying to Congress about creating Trump Tower Moscow in Russia.<\/b>
\nMichael Cohen\u2019s guilty plea in special counsel Robert Mueller\u2019s investigation on Thursday threatens to unveil an explosive possible reason why President Donald Trump adamantly wants friendly ties with Russia \u2014 a long-sought real estate deal.
A court document filed by Mueller states that Cohen \u2014 Trump\u2019s former personal lawyer and fixer \u2014 lied to Congress at least three separate times about plans to build a Trump Tower in Moscow with Trump\u2019s name prominently featured on top.
Cohen testified to Congress that negotiations to build Europe\u2019s tallest building stopped in January 2016. But emails and other communications obtained by multiple news outlets, and now basically confirmed by Cohen, show those negotiations actually continued much longer: into at least June 2016, after Trump had already become the Republican Party\u2019s nominee. And Buzzfeed News reported on Thursday that Trump\u2019s company planned to give the $50 million penthouse in the building to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
That matters, because it puts Trump\u2019s praise of Russia and Putin in a whole new ligh t \u2014 what most animated his warmth may have been personal profit. What\u2019s more, it\u2019s entirely possible that Trump knew a close confidante willingly lied to Congress earlier in the investigation.
It looks like Mueller is intimately aware of those communications, too \u2014 and he now has Cohen\u2019s full cooperation. That could spell trouble for Trump, because has long said he never had anything to do or at stake with Russia, but that\u2019s clearly not the case.
Yet Trump seems unfazed. After the Cohen plea deal was announced Thursday, Trump told reporters that he never really cared about the tower project and was focused solely on running for president. \u201cI wasn\u2019t trying to hide anything,\u201d he said, adding that \u201cwe decided \u2014 I decided ultimately not to do it. There would have been nothing wrong if I did do it.\u201d
But what\u2019s clear is that Cohen not only spoke to Trump about the plans during the campaign, but that the Trump Organization was in contact with high-level Russian officials at the same time.
Put together, it\u2019s very possible that Trump\u2019s desire for friendly US-Russia relations has less to do with what\u2019s good for America and more to do with what\u2019s good for him.
What follows is a review about the many years Trump tried to do business in Russia, what Cohen specifically lied about, why he may have lied \u2014 and how it could impact the president.
Before we get to Cohen\u2019s lies about the so-called \u201cTrump Tower Moscow\u201d project, it\u2019s important to know this: The president\u2019s claim that he never cared about building something in Russia doesn\u2019t track with his many failed attempts to do so over 30 years.
\u201cRussia is one of the hottest places in the world for investment,\u201d Trump said in a 2007 deposition. \u201cWe will be in Moscow at some point.\u201d
Let\u2019s start from the beginning. In his 1987 book The Art of the Deal, for example, Trump wrote that he spoke with then-Soviet ambassador Yuri Dubinin \u201cabout building a large luxury hotel across the street from the Kremlin in partnership with the Soviet government.\u201d Trump actually traveled to the country that year to scout locations.
That didn\u2019t pan out, but he kept trying. In 1996, the Trump Organization briefly explored a potential deal, but it proved fruitless.
In 2005, Trump\u2019s company signed a one-year deal with the Bayrock Group to push a construction project in Moscow through. One of the real-estate firm\u2019s leaders was the Russian-born and mafia-linked businessman Felix Sater. Working with Russian investors, Sater found an old pencil factory he believed could be destroyed and replaced with a luxurious skyscraper.
Sater and Trump grew their rapport during that time, Sater said during sworn testimony in an unrelated libel case. He also recalled keeping Trump informed about the deal\u2019s progress.
\u201cI handled all of the negotiations,\u201d he said. He added that his interactions with Trump were \u201cmore of verbal updates when I\u2019d come back, pop my head into Mr. Trump\u2019s office and tell him, you know, \u2018Moving forward on the Moscow deal.\u2019 And he would say, \u2018All right.\u2019 \u201d
\u201cI showed him photos, I showed him the site, showed him the view from the site. It\u2019s pretty spectacular,\u201d he continued.
That deal never materialized, but Sater would remain in the Trump Organization\u2019s orbit. In 2006, Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump traveled with Sater in Moscow. While there, Sater took the Trump children on a tour of the Kremlin \u2014 during which Ivanka even sat and spun around in Putin\u2019s chair while the Russian president wasn\u2019t around.
(Vox reached out to Sater for comment, but he has not responded as of publication time.)
In November 2013, Trump traveled to Moscow for the Ms. Universe pageant. It\u2019s around this time that Trump\u2019s desire to do business in Russia seemed to grow even stronger.
Months before going, Trump tweeted his hope that he and Putin would become close at the event. Because no major deal in Russia really gets done without high-level support from the Kremlin, Trump surely knew a good relationship with Putin would remove obstacles toward a final agreement.
And although during that trip Trump only spent two nights at the Ritz Carlton in Moscow, the site of some salacious allegations against Trump, a lot happened. For one, two real estate impresarios \u2014 Alex Sapir and Rotem Rosen, who both have connections to Putin\u2019s cohorts \u2014 joined Trump in Russia and worked to make a real-estate deal happen.
Trump also filmed a small part in a music video for pop star Emin Agalarov, the son of Aras Agalarov, a Russian billionaire tycoon with ties to Putin. Aras has previously claimed he helped Trump meet with local and foreign business leaders to discuss real-estate opportunities.
Afterward, Trump tweeted his pleasure with the trip and the Agalarovs \u2014 even referencing his wishes for a future \u201cTRUMP TOWER-MOSCOW.\u201d
Still, however, no real-estate deal materialized.
Trump announced his candidacy for president in July 2015 \u2014 and Sater saw an opportunity.
\u201cI figured, he\u2019s in the news, his name is generating a lot of good press,\u201d Sater told BuzzFeed News on May 17. \u201cA lot of Russians weren\u2019t willing to pay a premium licensing fee to put Donald\u2019s name on their building. Now maybe they would be.\u201d
This is where Michael Cohen really comes into the story.
Sater organized a meeting with Cohen \u2014 who at the time was representing Trump \u2014 in September 2015 to discuss having Trump license his name on a Russian-built edifice. Trump\u2019s company wouldn\u2019t actually construct the tower, but it would put his name on the structure and receive a portion of the revenue it generated. The two men came to an accord: Sater would find the builder and financiers for the project, while Cohen would ensure Trump signed the final agreement.
Sater was very confident. \u201cI will get Putin on this program and we will get Donald elected,\u201d Sater emailed Cohen . \u201cBuddy our boy can become President of the USA and we can engineer it. I will get all of Putins [sic] team to buy in on this.\u201d
The Russian-born businessman worked his contacts, and on October 12,2015, emailed Cohen that Putin and a \u201ctop deputy\u201d would meet with a surrogate for Sater in Moscow. What\u2019s more, a Russian bank \u2014 VTB Bank \u2014 would fund the project. (The bank\u2019s chair, Andrey Kostin, however, denies ever meeting Sater and says that his organization was never involved in a Trump Tower plan.)
One day later, Sater sent a nonbinding letter of intent, signed by Andrey Rozov, a well-to-do Moscow developer, to Cohen. The 17-page document would allow Cohen to negotiate the licensing deal with the Russians once Trump signed it. Some of the proposals in it are striking, including that it would be 100-stories tall with a pointy top and that any spas or fitness areas be branded \u201cThe Spa by Ivanka Trump.\u201d
Trump eventually signed the letter of intent on October 28,2015 \u2014 the same day as the third Republican presidential debate. Cohen afterward wrote to Sater and Rozov \u201cwe are truly looking forward to this wonderful opportunity.\u201d
\u201cEverything will be negotiated and discussed not with flunkies but with people who will have dinner with Putin and discuss the issues and get a go-ahead,\u201d Sater wrote Cohen on November 3. \u201cMy next steps are very sensitive with Putin\u2019s very, very close people. We can pull this off.\u201d
They eventually had a falling out, in part because Sater couldn\u2019t deliver. The effort died.
So there are all these efforts by the Trump Organization over the years to develop this Trump Tower property. No big deal, right? After all, Trump was a real-estate mogul for most of his life \u2014 developing real-estate properties is what he does. What\u2019s so wrong with that?
By itself, probably nothing. The critical question, though, is whether Trump\u2019s desire to develop this property compromised him during his presidential campaign \u2014 making him more susceptible to the Kremlin\u2019s attempts to influence the outcome of the 2016 election.
That\u2019s one of the key questions the special counsel investigation \u2014 and the parallel congressional investigations \u2014 has been trying to answer.
To that end, Congress called Cohen in to testify before them in a closed-door setting last year.
According to Mueller\u2019s court filing on Thursday, Cohen sent a two-page letter to the House and Senate intelligence committees on or around August 28,2017, in which he answered questions about the Moscow deal.
Here are three key things Cohen said in that letter, per Mueller\u2019s team:
Now we know that all of those statements are lies. And we know that because Cohen himself admitted it in court on Thursday. \u201cI made these statements to be consistent with Individual-1\u2019s political messaging and to be loyal to Individual-1,\u201d he told the federal court (\u201cIndividual-1\u201d refers to Trump).
Here\u2019s what actually happened, according to Cohen:
First, discussions about the Trump Tower Moscow project went deep into the presidential campaign \u2014 at least to June 2016 \u2014 and didn\u2019t end that January as Cohen had previously stated. He also admitted that he spoke with Trump more than three times about the project \u2014 more than he confessed to before \u2014 and even briefed members of the president\u2019s family.
What\u2019s more, the court filing says Cohen and \u201cIndividual-2\u201d \u2014 very likely Sater \u2014 \u201cas late as approximately June 2016… discussed efforts to obtain Russian governmental approval for the Moscow Project.\u201d
Second, Cohen did consider traveling to Russia and taking Trump with him. Cohen also asked a senior campaign official about the possibility for Trump to take a business trip to Russia.
It gets worse: The Mueller filing contains several instances of Cohen and Sater (\u201cIndividual-2\u201d) emailing in May 2016 about plans for Cohen\u2019s trip to Russia. In one message, Sater tells Cohen that a Russian official wants to meet him at a conference and \u201cpossibly introduce him\u201d to either the President of Russia or the Prime Minister of Russia, \u201cas they are not sure if 1 or both will be there.\u201d
He originally agreed to go. But on June 14,2016, he told Sater that he wouldn\u2019t be traveling to Russia after all. That\u2019s interesting timing, as it\u2019s the same day the Washington Post reported that Russia hacked into the Democratic National Committee\u2019s computer network.
Third, Russian government officials did respond to Cohen\u2019s inquiries about the Moscow project. Around January 14,2016, Cohen emailed the office of \u201cRussian Official 1\u201d \u2014 almost certainly Dmitry Peskov, Putin\u2019s press secretary and trusted adviser \u2014 seeking help with the tower deal.
\u201cI am hereby requesting your assistance,\u201d Cohen wrote. \u201cI respectfully request someone, preferably you, contact me so that I might discuss the specifics as well as arranging meetings with the appropriate individuals.\u201d
About six days later, an assistant of Peskov\u2019s wrote back requesting that Cohen call. He did shortly after receiving the email, and they spoke for about 20 minutes in which he outlined ways the assistant\u2019s office could help move the deal forward.
The Kremlin originally denied ever responding to Cohen, with Peskov saying on August 30 2017 that \u201cwe do not react to such business topics.\u201d But on Thursday, shortly after Cohen pleaded guilty, Peskov changed the story. \u201cLater we called and asked why they wanted to have meeting in presidential Administration and explained that we have nothing to do with construction issues in the City of Moscow,\u201d he said in a statement.
Experts I talked to say Cohen had good reason to want to keep his efforts to develop the Trump Tower Moscow project under wraps: It just looks bad. A Trump representative trying to secure a lucrative business deal with Russians closely linked with Putin on Trump\u2019s behalf during the 2016 presidential election \u2014 all while Trump was repeatedly championing better Washington-Moscow ties in campaign speeches \u2014 probably wouldn\u2019t play well with congressional investigators.
So instead of telling Congress and others the truth, Cohen chose to lie.
But now, he\u2019s come clean. It\u2019s possible Cohen confessed about the Trump Tower Moscow efforts in hopes of reducing his punishment for lying to Congress. ABC\u2019s George Stephanopoulos reported on Thursday that Cohen will now provide \u201cdozens of hours of testimony potentially damaging to\u201d Trump.
Trump, however, still defends his company\u2019s push to make a deal in Russia.
\u201cThere was a good chance that I wouldn\u2019t have won [the election], in which case I would have gone back into the business,\u201d he told reporters on Thursday. \u201cAnd why should I lose lots of opportunities?\u201d
Mueller may see things differently.<\/p>\n