Details emerge of early Moscow outreach to campaign
11 December, 2018
Key pieces of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation appear to be falling into place.
In three court filings Friday, prosecutors for the first time connected U.S. President Donald Trump to a crime involving hush money payments to a porn actress. They revealed new details about outreach from Russia early in Trump’s presidential campaign. They detailed how they say two central figures, lawyer Michael Cohen and onetime campaign chairman Paul Manafort, were continually tripped up by lies.
Some takeaways from the latest round of court documents from Mueller’s investigation:
? Early Russian outreach
Trump announced his presidential candidacy in June 2015. By that November, the Russians were reaching out about “political synergy.”
The court papers provide new details about one of the earliest known contacts between Russia and a Trump campaign associate. In autumn 2015, Cohen was months into his work on a proposed Trump Tower in Moscow when an unidentified Russian national proposed a meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. This person, prosecutors say, claimed to be a “trusted person” in Russia who could offer the Trump campaign “political synergy” and “synergy on a government level.”
This person sought to connect the Trump business project with the campaign, saying the meeting could have a “phenomenal” impact on the proposed tower in Moscow. There is “no bigger warranty in any project than the consent of” Putin, the person told Cohen.
Prosecutors say Cohen didn’t follow up and that the meeting never occurred.
The outreach is more evidence that Russia was eager to build relationships with the campaign and tried to use Trump’s business as an opening.
? Trump directed Cohen’s crime
Prosecutors didn’t mince words: The campaign finance violations Cohen committed came “in coordination with and at the direction of” Trump, according to the new filings.
Those violations stemmed from payments Cohen made to buy the silence of porn actress Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal. Both women alleged they had affairs with Trump, which the White House denies. Daniels was paid $130,000 as part of a nondisclosure agreement signed days before the 2016 election.
Trump has denied knowing anything about the Daniels payment. But the filing directly contradicts that claim. It also, for the first time, directly ties Trump to a federal crime. Campaign finance law requires candidates to report any payments made to influence the election. The Trump campaign failed to report the payment at the time.