Sounds like Kushner is going to be pushed under the bus next.
Shoes just keep a dropping,. Water just keeps rising.
President Trump Directed His Attorney To Lie To Congress About The Moscow Tower Project
By Jason Leopold and Anthony Cormier
10-12 minutes
Trump received 10 personal updates from Michael Cohen and encouraged a planned meeting with Vladimir Putin.
Posted on January 17, 2019, at 10:11 p.m. ET
Jonathan Ernst / Reuters
Donald Trump and his longtime attorney Michael Cohen.
President Donald Trump directed his longtime attorney Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about negotiations to build a Trump Tower in Moscow, according to two federal law enforcement officials involved in an investigation of the matter.
Trump also supported a plan, set up by Cohen, to visit Russia during the presidential campaign, in order to personally meet President Vladimir Putin and jump-start the tower negotiations. “Make it happen,” the sources said Trump told Cohen.
And even as Trump told the public he had no business deals with Russia, the sources said Trump and his children, Ivanka and Donald Trump Jr., received regular, detailed updates about the real estate development from Cohen, whom they put in charge of the project.
Cohen pleaded guilty in November to lying about the deal in testimony and in a two-page statement to the Senate and House intelligence committees. Special counsel Robert Mueller noted that Cohen’s false claim that the project ended in January 2016 was an attempt to "minimize links between the Moscow Project and Individual 1” — widely understood to be Trump — "in hopes of limiting the ongoing Russia investigations.”
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Now the two sources have told BuzzFeed News that Cohen also told the special counsel that after the election, the president personally instructed him to lie — by claiming that negotiations ended months earlier than they actually did — in order to obscure Trump’s involvement.
The special counsel’s office learned about Trump’s directive for Cohen to lie to Congress through interviews with multiple witnesses from the Trump Organization and internal company emails, text messages, and a cache of other documents. Cohen then acknowledged those instructions during his interviews with that office.
This revelation is not the first evidence to suggest the president may have attempted to obstruct the FBI and special counsel investigations into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.
But Cohen’s testimony marks a significant new frontier: It is the first known example of Trump explicitly telling a subordinate to lie directly about his own dealings with Russia.
On the campaign trail, Trump vehemently denied having any business interests in Russia. But behind the scenes, he was pushing the Moscow project, which he hoped could bring his company profits in excess of $300 million. The two law enforcement sources said he had at least 10 face-to-face meetings with Cohen about the deal during the campaign.
BuzzFeed News first reported last year that Cohen and an associate, Felix Sater, had continued working on Trump Tower Moscow through June 2016. Sater communicated with Russian bankers, developers, and officials connected to the Kremlin. That revelation was confirmed in Mueller’s filings against Cohen in court last November.
Attorneys close to the administration helped Cohen prepare his testimony and draft his statement to the Senate panel, the sources said. The sources did not say who the attorneys were or whether they were part of the White House counsel’s staff, and did not present evidence that the lawyers knew the statements would be false.
An attorney for Donald F. McGahn II, the former White House counsel who reportedly gave about 30 hours of testimony to the special counsel, told BuzzFeed News: “Don McGahn had no involvement with or knowledge of Michael Cohen’s testimony. Nor was he aware of anyone in the White House Counsel’s Office who did.”
Drew Angerer / Getty Images
Former White House Counsel Donald F. McGahn II in the lobby of Trump Tower in 2016. His attorney told BuzzFeed News Mr. McGahn "had no involvement with or knowledge of Michael Cohen’s testimony. Nor was he aware of anyone in the White House Counsel’s Office who did.”
After Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about the matter, Mueller’s team filed a memo in court saying he had offered them “credible” and “useful” information over the course of seven interviews. The special counsel wrote that Cohen had provided details about his contacts with “persons connected to the White House” in 2017 and 2018 and about how he had prepared his statements to Congress.
The White House did not return detailed messages seeking comment, nor did an an attorney for Donald Trump Jr. or the Trump Organization.
A spokesperson for the Office of Special Counsel declined to comment.
Cohen also declined comment — but the law enforcement sources familiar with his testimony to the special counsel said he had confirmed that Trump directed him to lie to Congress, and also that he had provided details of his conversations about the project with the president and Ivanka and Donald Jr.
Those three members of the Trump family have distanced themselves from the Moscow project, saying that they had little knowledge of the negotiations. But a picture of their deep involvement is now emerging, as FBI agents and prosecutors pore over witness interviews and internal documents from Cohen and other Trump Organization officials and executives.
Trump was even made aware that Cohen was speaking to Russian government officials about the deal. The lawyer at one point spoke to a Kremlin aide as he sought support for the tower.
Trump also encouraged Cohen to plan a trip to Russia during the campaign, where the candidate could meet face-to-face with Putin.
BuzzFeed News has previously reported that text messages and emails show Sater — a real estate developer, convicted stock swindler, and longtime asset for US government intelligence agencies — worked furiously to arrange a trip for Cohen to the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, where he was supposed to meet with top Russian bankers and government officials. Cohen told Sater that to advance the deal, Trump himself would also go to Russia, after the Republican National Convention in July 2016.
Melissa Lyttle / Melissa Lyttle for BuzzFeed News
Felix Sater, who worked with Michael Cohen to get Trump Tower Moscow built, at the Beverly Hills Hotel in 2018.
The trip to St. Petersburg never took place and the plans to build Trump Tower Moscow never came to fruition. But the negotiations occupy an important place in Mueller’s investigation, as agents try to learn whether it is connected to the Kremlin’s interference campaign and whom Trump associates were in contact with to close the deal.
After Cohen pleaded guilty last November, Trump defended his continued involvement in the Moscow project during the election, telling reporters: “There was a good chance that I wouldn’t have won, in which case I would have gotten back into the business, and why should I lose lots of opportunities?”
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Federal agents looking into whether the Trump campaign conspired with Russia to interfere in the 2016 election also tried to clarify the roles that Ivanka and Donald Trump Jr. played in the Moscow tower negotiations, the sources said.
In his plea deal with Mueller’s team, Cohen acknowledged that the conversations he had about the project with Trump exceeded the three short briefings he testified that he gave the president and that he also held more extensive discussions about it with other members of the Trump family. The sources said Cohen gave Trump’s children “very detailed updates.”
Provided to BuzzFeed News
An architectural rendering of the proposed Trump Tower in Moscow.
Ivanka Trump was slated to manage a spa at the tower and personally recommended an architect. She also instructed Cohen to speak with a Russian athlete who offered “synergy on a government level” to get the Moscow project off the ground, in another aspect of the deal first revealed by BuzzFeed News that later was affirmed by the special counsel’s sentencing memo. Cohen rebuffed the athlete’s proposal, which angered Ivanka Trump, according to emails reviewed by BuzzFeed News.
A spokesperson for Ivanka Trump’s attorney wrote that she was only “minimally involved” in the project. “Ms. Trump did not know about this proposal until after a non-binding letter of intent had been signed, never talked to anyone outside the Organization about the proposal, never visited the prospective project site and, even internally, was only minimally involved,” wrote Peter Mirijanian.
Donald Trump Jr., meanwhile, testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Sept. 7, 2017, that he was only “peripherally aware” of the plan to build a tower in Moscow. “Most of my knowledge has been gained since as it relates to hearing about it over the last few weeks.”
The two law enforcement sources disputed this characterization and said that he and Cohen had multiple, detailed conversations on this subject during the campaign.
Cohen will testify publicly before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on Feb. 7. ●
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No biggie.
Narrators Voice “It is a biggie.”
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Before that story broke an hour ago, … this was the biggest story of the day, which is in itself huge.
The bizarre just keeps coming in this psychedelic circus.
Michael Cohen paid tech firm to rig polls for Trump, create Twitter account hailing lawyer as ‘sex symbol’
John Wagner
4-5 minutes
Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, acknowledged a report Thursday that he hired a technology company to help rig online polls in his boss’s favor ahead of the 2016 presidential campaign and said what he did was at Trump’s direction.
Cohen responded on Twitter to a Wall Street Journal story that said Cohen had promised to pay $50,000 to a small firm run by the chief information officer at Liberty University in Virginia, where the evangelical leader and ardent Trump supporter Jerry Falwell Jr. is president.
“As for the @WSJ article on poll rigging, what I did was at the direction of and for the sole benefit of @realDonaldTrump @POTUS,” Cohen wrote. “I truly regret my blind loyalty to a man who doesn’t deserve it.”
CNN reporter Jim Sciutto tweeted this morning Cohen had confirmed the report to the TV network.
According to the Journal article, John Gauger, who owns RedFinch Solutions, showed up at Trump Tower in New York in early 2015 expecting to collect $50,000 for his firm’s work influencing polls for CNBC and the Drudge Report.
Gauger appears to have had trouble tipping the scales in Trump’s favor.
Cohen reportedly asked for his help in swaying a January 2014 CNBC poll to name the country’s top business leaders. Gauger wrote a computer script to repeatedly vote for Trump, but was still unable to get him into the top 100 candidates.
In February 2015, Cohen asked for help in rigging a Drudge Report poll of potential Republican candidates. However, Trump only managed to take fifth place, with about 24,000 votes, despite the assistance of RedFinch.
Trump came in behind now-Housing and Urban Development head Ben Carson and Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Rand Paul of Kentucky. Former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker won the poll.
For his efforts, Cohen presented a blue Walmart bag containing $12,000 to $13,000 in cash and a boxing glove that Cohen said had been worn by a Brazilian mixed martial arts fighter, Gauger told the Journal. Cohen denied to the Journal that he had paid cash, saying he paid with a check.
Gauger told the Journal that he never got the rest of what he claimed he was owed. But Cohen in early 2017 received a $50,000 reimbursement from Trump and his company for the RedFinch work, the Journal reported.
Cohen also has said he helped arrange payments at Trump’s direction to silence women who claimed to have had affairs with Trump.
Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, a personal lawyer for Trump, told the Journal that the RedFinch reimbursement showed that Cohen - who has since had a falling out with Trump - is a thief.
“If one thing has been established, it’s that Michael Cohen is completely untrustworthy,” Giuliani said.
“The president didn’t know about it and he didn’t know he stole that money,” Giuliani told the New York Daily News. “If he contracted with that company, he wouldn’t have had authority from the campaign to do that. He was on his own.”
Liberty issued a statement calling Gauger “one example among many outstanding LU employees who have made great contributions in their official roles and also enjoyed success as independent entrepreneurs.”
Cohen has pleaded guilty to campaign-finance violations, tax evasion, lying to Congress and other charges unrelated to the RedFinch payment. He was sentenced last month to three years in prison, and is scheduled to testify before Congress next month before he begins his sentence.
According to the Journal, Cohen also instructed Gauger to create a @WomenForCohen Twitter account. Posts on the account, created in May 2016, described Cohen as a “sex symbol” and “pit bull.”
The Associated Press contributed
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Label them however you like; Maoist, Stalinist, Trotskyites, etc etc, philosophy has minor differences and all are about total control of body and mind. Force and guns are the preferred method.
The rest of the Left are not extreme.
For a bloke that has stated many times that he knows more about drones, isis, tax, develpmoent, campaigns, the environment, military…he sure seems to know nothing about who, what and when his business leaders are talking to with Russia.
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Lol, so the only extreme people on the left are Maoist, Stalinist, Trotskyites, etc etc.
So out of curiosity, where do you think those who want to cap gun numbers or ban all guns totally sit on the US political spectrum?
I think when he talks about extreme left and extreme right he is talking about the compound groups who legitimately want to over throw the status quo through violence and hence with firearms.
The seventies was littered with these sorts of cults, at both extremes of the political spectrum. Jonestown a good example but so was the SLA. These days there are more right wing paramilitary groups, or so it appears.
Find me ANYONE in US politics who wants either of those things, and we’ll talk. Not even someone who’s been elected - just someone who’s campaigning for those policies.
Brilliant ad
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In the equivalent US based message boards there are plenty of them. And they’re predominantly on the left of politics.
That is almost impossible to answer Ants, as for Americans it is not a political issue, but civil rights, constitutional rights and fear. Many socially progressive Americans want other to not have guns but will say they are good people so they should have them. Most of the Aussies that I know in the US, do not have guns.
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I wonder what Australian Public Servants would do if they were told they were not going to be paid. Most of the US Government Workers are just going to work it seems. Not sure we would be doing that.
If it were in areas that required ongoing monitoring and that people relied upon to survive then of course we would, and probably in many other areas as well. You seem to have a very rosy view of politicians but a dim one of the pleb. Stockholm is nice this time of year.
Discussed it with colleagues. No ■■■■■■■ way we would come in for no pay. I’d be in the protests with CPSU comrades.
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What if you were assured of backpay? ANd I’m not suggesting you’d be wrong in your choice, not knowing what you do of course.
Nope.
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Free tickets to Cirque Du Soleil?
Tempting. But no.
If they can’t fund my dept i wouldn’t trust "assurances " of back pay.
Gotcha