Oops.
Michael D. Cohen, President Trump’s former lawyer, who pleaded guilty in August to breaking campaign finance laws, made a surprise appearance in a Manhattan courtroom on Thursday morning and pleaded guilty to a new criminal charge, the latest turn in the special counsel’s investigation of Mr. Trump and his inner circle.
At the court hearing, Mr. Cohen admitted to making false statements to Congress about his efforts to build a Trump Tower deal in Moscow during the 2016 presidential campaign. That real estate deal has been a focus of the special counsel investigation into whether the Trump campaign conspired with Russian operatives.
Oooops. That sounds big. Lawfare has posted the docs for us, and from what I’ve read so far it looks big. Cohen admits to telling a bunch of lies to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and not trivial lies but big lies, about that Trump Tower deal in Moscow. He said it was all over and finished in January 2016, before the Iowa caucus and months before the first primary.
It wasn’t.
The new guilty plea in Federal District Court marks the first time the office of the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, has charged Mr. Cohen. In exchange for pleading guilty and continuing to cooperate with Mr. Mueller, he may hope to receive a lighter sentence than he otherwise would.
But even more than that, from what he has said before, he wants not to take the hit all by himself. He committed all these crimes at the behest of the corrupt pile of shit who squats in the Oval Office, and he wants that corrupt pile of shit to fall with him.
Devastating words from Michael Cohen for the President – who is individual 1.
“I made these statements to be consistent with Individual-1’s political messaging and to be loyal to Individual-1,” Cohen said in court.
— Shimon Prokupecz (@ShimonPro) November 29, 2018
The Criminal Information doesn’t name Trump but calls him Individual 1 – the Individual 1 who was Cohen’s employer and a candidate for president.
Cohen has admitted that he was still discussing a Trump development project in Russia as late as June 2016, the month Trump Jr. held the Clinton-related meeting with the Russian lawyer, and had shortly before that been discussing going to Russia for talks. https://t.co/iPBJG7JIa0
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) November 29, 2018
>> @JeffreyToobin: "Why? Why was Donald Trump so solicitous of Russia? Michael Cohen's statements here suggest the reason was MONEY. The reason was, Donald Trump had business interests with Russia during the 2016 campaign." pic.twitter.com/RpFMInDdBx
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) November 29, 2018
He should be removed from office right now. Today.
Comments
4 responses to “Why Individual 1 was such a friend to Putin”
Trump’s response (my bolding);
Hang on a mo’, in his denial Trump actually confirmed that the deal was being negotiated during his presidential campaign, so what exactly is he accusing Cohen of lying about?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-46390368
I think he has some sort of macro set up to automatically insert “lying” and then he says what he really means. And open about it would mean that we wouldn’t just be finding out. We would have known already that he was seriously compromised in relation to one of the world’s countries where tensions currently exist.
Huh. I have always thought of him as more of an individual Number 2.
He’s the living, breathing version of that old riddle; if a man says “Everything I say is a lie” is he telling the truth about always lying, or lying about never being honest?