Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former personal attorney, has reached a plea deal with special counsel Robert Mueller on Thursday that reveals negotiations about building a Trump Tower in Moscow occurred well into the 2016 presidential campaign.
Cohen, 52, “knowingly and willfully made a materially false, fictitious and fraudulent statement and representation” to the Senate Intelligence Committee about the real estate project, according to a nine-page filing by federal prosecutors on the special counsel’s team.
Cohen, who arrived around 9 a.m. local time, pleaded guilty to one count of making false statements to Congress in the Southern District of New York.
“Michael Cohen has cooperated, Michael Cohen will continue to cooperate,” his lawyer, Guy Petrillo, said outside the courthouse at around 10 a.m. According to the plea agreement, which hinges on his ongoing cooperation with the special counsel, Cohen faces between zero and six months in federal prison.
In August 2017, Cohen sent a two-page letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee and the House Intelligence Committee about efforts to open a Trump Tower in Moscow.
Prosecutors said in their filing that Cohen lied about discussing the project past January 2016. The court filing shows that discussion did not end at that time, stemming as late as June 2016.
Cohen admitted that he discussed the Trump Tower project with Trump on more than three occasions, and also briefed Trump’s family members about it. The discussions also happened with someone known as Individual 2, who is believed to be Russian-born developer Felix Slater.
Cohen admitted to lying to Congress about never agreeing to travel to Russia in connection with the project, and when he said he “never considered” asking Individual 1 — believed to be Trump — to travel to Russia for the project.
Cohen agreed to travel to Russia, and he “took steps in contemplation of” Trump’s “possible travel to Russia,” prosecutors said in in the court filing.
The trips never happened, but Cohen did agree to travel to Russia in early May 2016 for meetings on the project.
Cohen also lied to Congress about not remembering any Russian response or contact with any Russians about the project in Moscow.
Cohen had previously said that after the project stalled in January 2016, he emailed a top aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin seeking help. He claimed he never got a response and the project formally ended that month.
But Cohen lied about that, and the Russians did respond. Cohen discussed the project for 20 minutes on the phone with an assistant to Dmitry Peskov, a senior aide to Putin, prosecutors said.
Cohen made the false statements to “minimize links between the Moscow Project and Individual 1,” i.e. Trump.
Cohen also made the false statements to give the “false impression that the Moscow project ended before … ‘the Iowa caucus … and the first primary,’ in hopes of limiting the ongoing Russia investigation,” the court filing reveals.
In addition to the statement given to both the Senate Intelligence and House Intelligence committees, Cohen gave closed door testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee in October 2017. That testimony was consistent with the statement sent in August 2017, and consistent with prepared remarks he released publicly in September 2017.
Cohen reportedly concluded his statement in court Thursday morning, saying: “I made these misstatements to be consistent with Individual 1’s political messaging and out of loyalty to Individual 1.”
Cohen, who worked for Trump from 2006 until this year, pleaded guilty in August to eight counts of campaign finance violations, tax fraud, and bank fraud.
In his statement to a judge in United States District Court in Manhattan at the time, Cohen said he violated campaign finance laws “in coordination with and at the direction of a candidate for federal office,” i.e. Trump, “for the principal purpose of influencing the election” in 2016.
That case was passed off from Mueller to the Southern District of New York earlier this year, and he was charged by federal prosecutors not from the special counsel’s team.
The sentencing report from Cohen’s defense team in the case was due Wednesday, however it was never filed. He is still set to be sentenced in the case on Dec. 12.
Trump has repeatedly said that he had no business dealings in Russia.
He tweeted in July 2016: “For the record, I have ZERO investments in Russia,” and told reporters in at a press conference January 2017 that he had no deals “that could happen in Russia because we’ve stayed away.”
Trump told reporters outside the White House on Thursday that his former fixer is lying to get a reduced sentence for the campaign finance law charges.
“He was convicted of various things unrelated to us,” Trump said as he was leaving for the G-20 summit in Buenos Aires, adding, “He’s a weak person and what he’s trying to do is get a reduced sentence.”
Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, echoed those sentiments in a statement, calling Cohen a “proven liar.”
“It’s no surprise that Cohen lied to Congress. He’s a proven liar who is doing everything he can to get out of a long-term prison sentence for serious crimes of bank and tax fraud that had nothing to do with the Trump Organization,” Giuliani said.
