Top Trump executive, Michael Cohen, asked Putin aide for help on business deal
Michael Cohen, liaising with the Russian Federation.
Washington Post, “Top Trump Organization executive asked Putin aide for help on business deal”, 28 August, 2017:
A top executive from Donald Trump’s real estate company emailed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s personal spokesman during the U.S. presidential campaign last year to ask for help advancing a stalled Trump Tower development project in Moscow, according to documents submitted to Congress on Monday.
The request came in a mid-January 2016 email from Michael Cohen, one of Trump’s closest business advisers, who asked longtime Putin lieutenant Dmitry Peskov for assistance in reviving a deal that Cohen suggested was languishing.
“Over the past few months I have been working with a company based in Russia regarding the development of a Trump Tower-Moscow project in Moscow City,” Cohen wrote to Peskov, according to a person familiar with the email. “Without getting into lengthy specifics, the communication between our two sides has stalled.
“As this project is too important, I am hereby requesting your assistance. I respectfully request someone, preferably you, contact me so that I might discuss the specifics as well as arranging meetings with the appropriate individuals. I thank you in advance for your assistance and look forward to hearing from you soon,” Cohen wrote.
Click to page showing Trump-Russian links
Cohen’s email marks the most direct outreach documented by a top Trump aide to a similarly senior member of Putin’s government.
Cohen told congressional investigators in a statement Monday that he did not recall receiving a response from Peskov or having further contact with Russian government officials about the project. The email, addressed to Peskov, appeared to have been sent to a general Kremlin press account.
The note adds to the list of contacts between Trump associates and Russian officials that have been a focus of multiple congressional inquiries as well as an investigation led by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III exploring Russian interference in the 2016 election. U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that the Kremlin intervened to help elect Trump.
Cohen’s email to Peskov provides an example of a Trump business official directly seeking Kremlin assistance in advancing Trump’s business interests.
Cohen told congressional investigators that the deal was envisioned as a licensing project, in which Trump would have been paid for the use of his name by a Moscow-based developer called I.C. Expert Investment Co.
Cohen said that he discussed the deal three times with Trump and that Trump signed a letter of intent with the company on Oct. 28, 2015. He said the Trump company began to solicit designs from architects and discuss financing.
However, he said that the project was abandoned “for business reasons” when government permission was not secured and that the matter was “not related in any way to Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign.”
Cohen’s request to Peskov came as Trump was distinguishing himself on the campaign trail with warm rhetoric about Putin.
Cohen said in his statement to Congress that he wrote the email at the recommendation of Felix Sater, a Russian American businessman who was serving as a broker on the deal.
In the statement, obtained by The Washington Post, Cohen said Sater suggested the outreach because a massive Trump development in Moscow would require Russian government approval.
Related Story:
Raw Story, 20 Feb 2017:
“BUSTED: Trump attorney Michael Cohen caught giving conflicting statements about secret Ukraine deal”
President Donald Trump’s personal attorney offered conflicting explanations about his alleged involvement in back-channel efforts to ease sanctions against Russia.
Michael Cohen, special counsel to the president and a longtime employee of the Trump Organization, admitted to the New York Times that he had delivered sealed plans for settling Russia’s conflict with Ukraine to then-National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.
The newspaper, which first reported on the secret plans, quoted Cohen as saying he left the proposal with Flynn earlier this month and was waiting for a response when the retired general resigned over misleading statements he’d made about his communications with the Russian ambassador.
“Who doesn’t want to help bring about peace?” Cohen told the Times.
Cohen and Felix Sater, a business associate who helped Trump look for deals in Russia, claim they had never spoken to the president about their plans and have no experience in foreign policy.
The pair reportedly met with Ukrainian politician Andrii Artemenko, which Coren acknowledged in a separate interview with the Washington Post, just days before Flynn’s resignation — but he denied taking the sealed envelope to the White House and leaving it with the national security adviser.
“I acknowledge that the brief meeting took place, but emphatically deny discussing this topic or delivering any documents to the White House and/or General Flynn,” Cohen told the Post.
Cohen provided an identically worded statement to Lawnewz disputing the Times reporting on his document delivery.
The Times defended its account of Cohen’s actions, saying the attorney told reporters “in no uncertain terms that he delivered the Ukraine proposal to Michael Flynn’s office at the White House.”
Sater also told Times reporters that Cohen had told him the same thing, according to the newspaper’s deputy managing editor, Matt Purdy.
Cohen’s name comes up in an infamous dossier compiled by a former British spy on Trump’s Russian ties.
According to the unverified dossier, Cohen secretly met with Kremlin officials in Prague during August to “clean up the mess” over former campaign chair Paul Manafort’s ties to the pro-Russia regime in Ukraine.
The dossier claims Cohen helped set up plans to pay off hackers and others involved in an alleged plot to interfere with the U.S. election and quickly move them underground in case Hillary Clinton won.
Cohen has denied the claims, saying his passport shows he was not in Prague and was instead in California visiting a college with his son.
He denied to Lawnewz that he was under investigation by the FBI or any other government authorities.
“It would take any half decent, unbiased journalist 10 minutes to verify the inaccuracies in the dossier,” Cohen told the website.
Posted by list of Trump's weekly misdeeds on Mon, 04 Sep 2017 10:22 | #