Former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to a federal charge of lying to Congress on Thursday, according to news reports.
He admitted that he misled federal lawmakers about a proposed deal to build a Trump Tower project in Moscow, something he was working on in 2015 and 2016 while President Donald Trump was running for the White House.
Cohen has previously said the project was shelved in January 2016, but it extended until June of that year – throughout the entirety of the Republican presidential primary process.
Prosecutors wrote in a charging document that Cohen lied in order to 'minimize links between the Moscow Project and [Donald Trump],' and to 'give the false impression that the Moscow Project ended in early 2016 before "the Iowa caucus and the very first primary," in hopes of limiting the ongoing Russia investigations.'
President Trump bashed his former confidant as he left the White House, saying he's 'making up a story' and 'lying, very simply, to get a reduced sentence.'
'He's a weak person and not a very smart person,' Trump told reporters, contending that 'he's trying to get a much lesser prison sentence by making up a story.'
The president said as he left for the G20 summit in Argentina that he would have resumed work on the Moscow project if he had lost the election to Hillary Clinton.
But he decided 'sometime in 2016' to let it go.
Trump said that even if Cohen were telling the truth, 'it doesn't matter. Because I was allowed to do whatever I wanted during the campaign. I was running my business.'
He said 'I'm not worried at all' about the implications of Cohen's actions.
Michael Cohen, former lawyer to President Donald Trump, was in federal court on Thursday to enter his latest guilty plea
President Trump bashed his former confidant as he left the White House, saying he's 'making up a story' and 'lying, very simply, to get a reduced sentence'
Special Counsel Robert Mueller charged Cohen with lying to Congress about a plan to build a Trump Tower project in Moscow
Cohen, seen smiling as he was driven away from court, faces sentencing on Dec. 12 for his guilty pleas, including one involving a hush-money payment to pornographic actress Stormy Daniels at President Trump's direction
Asked why he ever hired Cohen for a top-tier Trump Organization job in the first place, given his characterization of the attorney as dishonest, Trump responded: 'Because a long time ago he did me a favor.'
Cohen helped Trump in 2003 during a dispute with condominium owners in Trump World Tower. He had hiked condo fees by tens of thousands of dollras per unit in order to recoup legal expenses from suing New York City in a case that resulted in $94 million in tax savings for the building.
According to the government's criminal indictment, known as an 'information,' Cohen made false statements in writing to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees about the length of discussions about the project, and about his conversations with Trump Organization figures about it.
His false statements included claiming that the deal wasn't discussed extensively, that he never agreed to travel to Russia to promote it and 'never considered' asking Trump to travel there, and that he didn't recall a Russian government response.
The information says Cohen 'knowingly and deliberately' lied.
'In truth and in fact, and as Cohen well knew, Cohen's representations about the Moscow Project he made' to Congress were 'false and misleading,' according to prosecutors.
In fact, Cohen discussed the project with the future president 'on more than the three occasions,' briefed Trump and his family members about it, and had multiple discussions with an unnamed person about Trump making a Moscow visit.
That unnamed individual is likely project backer Felix Sater.
In this courtroom sketch, Michael Cohen, center, read his statement Thursday in a New York City federal courtroom. He pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about work he did on a canceled project to build a Trump Tower in Russia
In one May 4, 2016 email, Sater wrote that he 'had a chat with Moscow' about the real estate venture and said the question was whether Trump would go 'before or after the [Republican] convention' for a meeting between the 'big guys.'
Cohen responded that he would go 'before Cleveland,' the site of the Republican National Convention, and that Trump would take a trip 'once he becomes the nominee after the convention.'
A May 5 email includes an invitation from Vladimir Putin's press secretary, Dmitri Peskov, inviting Cohen to St. Petersburg for an introduction to either the president or prime minister of Russia.
Prosecutors also found proof that on Jan. 20, 2016, exactly a year before Trump took office, Cohen spoke to a Peskov assistant for about 20 minutes.
He 'requested assistance in moving the project forward, both in securing land to build the proposed tower and financing the construction,' the criminal information says.
Sater contacted him the following day to ask about the call, writing that it was 'about [the President of Russia that] they called.'
Cohen's courtroom comeuppance on Thursday came after he gave Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his team a reported 70 hours of interviews.
They pressed him on Trump's real estate business ties in Russia, possible discussions with the president about pardons, and obstruction of justice.
Trump said that even if Cohen were telling the truth, 'it doesn't matter. Because I was allowed to do whatever I wanted during the campaign. I was running my business'
Cohen's courtroom comeuppance came after Cohen gave Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his team 70 hours of interviews.
Cohen appeared outside the federal courthouse in Manhattan with his lawyer Guy Petrillo, who told reporters: 'Mr. Cohen has cooperated. Mr. Cohen will continue to cooperate. Sentencing is set for December 12'
Cohen appeared outside the federal courthouse in Manhattan with his lawyer Guy Petrillo, who told reporters: 'Mr. Cohen has cooperated. Mr. Cohen will continue to cooperate. Sentencing is set for December 12.'
He has already testified in a Manhattan courtroom that he made an illegal hush-money payment to Stormy Daniels, a pornographic actress who claims to have bedded Trump a decade ago, 'in coordination with, and at the direction of' Trump.
Virginia Democratic Sen. Mark Warner told reporters that Cohen's admissions were part of a 'rollout of close Trump allies' pleading guilty 'almost always to their trying to hide their ties with Russia and the Russians attempt to infiltrate the Trump campaign.'
'You’ve got all these close associates of the president one after another pleading guilty, often pleading guilty, about their ties to Russia and Russians. And what are they covering up for?'
'If anything the president said is true, that there’s “no there there,” why are all his closest associates being found guilty of lying about their ties to Russia?' Warner asked.
The latest twist in his saga will come with an attached string of dozens of hours of of testimony that could be criminally damaging to the president.
Cohen's new charge comes from Mueller. His previous ones, bank and tax charges to which he has already pleaded guilty, were lodged by federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York.
At issue is Cohen's testimony before two congressional panels in September 2017 during the course of their own Russia investigations. At the time, he was still considered a loyal Trump footsoldier.
Some of his testimony related to the construction of a Trump World Tower Moscow, a project that involved the Agalarov family – who was also involved in the effort to set up a Trump Tower meeting with Russians in 2016.
Cohen testified before Congress that the tower project had fizzled, saying the 'proposal was not feasible for a variety of business reasons and should not be pursued further,' Yahoo News reported in May.
However, Cohen's communications with Moscow-born developer Felix Sater revealed that the contacts continued beyond what Cohen admitted during his sworn testimony.
Sater handed over his texts and emails to Mueller's investigators. The texts and other communications revealed Cohen and Sater were discussing the project as late as May 2016.
That puts the high-level talks about a plan to build the tallest building in Moscow well into the Republican nominating process. Trump during the campaign said repeatedly he didn't have business dealings with Russia.
Emails between Sater and Cohen revealed Sater's efforts to pitch the skyscraper project to the Trump Organization. Sater said he could get Russian President Vladimir Putin to say 'great things' about Trump.
In a statement released before his closed-door sessions with congressional investigators, Cohen said he 'had nothing to do with any Russian involvement in our electoral process' and 'never saw anything – not a hint of anything – that demonstrated [President Trump’s] involvement in Russian interference in our election or any form of Russian collusion.'
Cohen has testified that he paid off Stormy Daniels for her silence with Trump's knowledge and at his direction
He is expected to be sentenced to between four and five years in prison in December for his first federal case. It's unclear if the new guily plea will involve more jail time.
Cohen has publicly turned against President Trump since the FBI raided his home and offices in April.
Prosecutors deemed the $130,000 Stormy Daniels payment illegal because it was intended to help Trump avoid an embarrassing electoral loss to Hillary Clinton – and was therefore an 'in-kind' political contribution far in excess of the limits of the law.
Cohen's earlier plea also covered his role in arranging an illegal payment from the parent company of the National Enquirer to Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model who claimed to have had a Trump affair.
At Cohen's request, American Media Inc. bought the rights to McDougal's life story and sat on it without publishing anything, in a practice known as 'catch and kill.'
American Media's chairman and CEO, David Pecker, is a longtime Trump friend.
The Mueller probe has been a consistent thorn in the president's side, turning Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein into his bête noire for having appointed the special counsel.
On Wednesday he defended his decision to distribute a Photoshopped image that showed 11 of his foes in a prison cell together, including Rosenstein.
A New York Post reporter asked the president, 'Why do you think he belongs behind bars?'
'He should have never picked a special counsel,' Trump responded.
President Trump used his Twitter account on Wednesday to forward posts from a fan account, including a graphic that depicted his Democratic opponents in prison, along with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein
This image from 'The Trump Train' includes 9 of Trump's partisan opponents behind bars, and shows Robert Mueller (far left) and Rosenstein (3rd from left, back row) joining them
Trump has long resented Rosenstein for hiring Mueller to investigate the unproven allegation that campaign aides in 2016 colluded with Russian agents to tilt the election in the president's favor
The president had hours earlier retweeted a series of posts from a fan account, including the cartoonish image that also depicts Special Counsel Robert Mueller joining nine prominent Democrats in lockup.
'NOW THAT THE RUSSIA COLLUSION IS A PROVEN LIE, WHEN DO THE TRIALS FOR TREASON BEGIN,' its caption reads.
Among the 'imprisoned' Democrats in the collage are former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton; Hillary Clinton, her former campaign chairman John Podesta and top aide Huma Abedin; former Attorney Generals Loretta Lynch and Eric Holder; and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.
Trump has long resented Rosenstein for hiring Mueller to investigate the unproven allegation that campaign aides in 2016 colluded with Russian agents to tilt the election in the president's favor.
The special counsel appointment became inevitable after Trump fired Comey last year. That followed a decision by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to recuse himself from the matter because he was a Trump campaign adviser and investigators could consider him a witness.
Trump has grumbled publicly and exploded privately about Sessions' move, saying he never warned him before he got the job that the recusal would be part of the deal.
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News Pictures Former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen in court to enter new guilty plea
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