Tag: Michael Cohen

The Story: Late on Friday, June 19, the Attorney General announced that Geoffrey S. Berman, who has for more than two years been the chief...

Although Mr. Cohen was not a central part of the Trump family business, he was often at Mr. Trump’s side in the decade before he became president, including helping him sort out difficulties leading up to the 2016 election. Most famously, he helped arrange hush money payments to two women — including the pornographic film actress Stormy Daniels — who claimed to have had affairs with Mr. Trump. After months of indecision, he turned on Mr. Trump last summer and has since spoken to the Southern District prosecutors about the Trump family business and more, as well as providing information to the office of the special counsel, Mr. Mueller. Mr. Cohen implicated the president in a crime Federal prosecutors in Manhattan effectively characterized Mr. Trump as an unindicted co-conspirator in the hush money payments, which violated campaign finance laws because they were made to influence the outcome of the election. But when a president is no longer in office, prosecutors are free to bring charges — a possibility cited in the Mueller report released on Thursday. He assisted criminal investigations into Mr. Trump’s business Mr. Cohen did not enter into a formal cooperation agreement with the Southern District prosecutors, but voluntarily met with them about his knowledge of Mr. Trump’s family, business and inner circle. Mr. Cohen used the spotlight to attack the president’s character Since turning on his former boss, Mr. Cohen has become one of Mr. Trump’s fiercest critics, offering fodder for the president’s detractors. He gave Congress a view into the president’s finances Mr. Cohen’s testimony has also provided something of a road map for congressional investigators looking into Mr. Trump’s finances. And as Mr. Cohen’s May 6 surrender date nears, his lawyers appear to be making a last-ditch effort to keep him out of prison. raid and about a Trump Tower project in Russia, as well as discussions with the president’s lawyer about a possible pardon.

“Are we going to meet Thursday or Friday?” Mr. Costello texted Mr. Giuliani on a Monday. Mr. Costello told prosecutors in a recent meeting that the pardon discussion had been initiated by Mr. Cohen and rejected by Mr. Giuliani. When Mr. Giuliani was hired by the president a few days later, Mr. Costello emailed Mr. Cohen: “I told you my relationship with Rudy which could be very very useful for you.” “Great news,” Mr. Cohen replied. The next day, after speaking to Mr. Giuliani by phone, Mr. Costello wrote in an email to Mr. Citron that the president’s lead lawyer had been “thrilled that I reached out to him about Cohen.” He added that Mr. Giuliani was “calling the president tonight.” Mr. Costello also shared his upbeat assessment with Mr. Cohen. Under an information-sharing agreement among the lawyers, Mr. Ryan had discussed with Mr. Giuliani that the Trumps had reimbursed Mr. Cohen for the hush money he paid to the pornographic film actress Stormy Daniels. As the president’s lead lawyer continued to publicly discuss the hush-money scheme in the days and weeks that followed, Mr. Cohen told associates that Mr. Giuliani was “blowing this whole thing.” ‘Keep on Punching’ Days after Mr. Giuliani appeared on Fox News, Mr. Costello confided to Mr. Citron, his partner, about his mounting concerns that Mr. Cohen was stringing them along. “Does Cohen really want a friend of Comey as his lawyer?” he asked in a text message. In the interview with The Times, Mr. Giuliani said that he was new to the issue of the legal fees at the time, having just been hired by Mr. Trump a couple of months earlier. “The idea that the Trump Organization should have paid his legal fees and expenses is a total crock.” Distrust between the two sides only grew in June when the comedian Tom Arnold tweeted a selfie with Mr. Cohen and later claimed that they were teaming up to take down the president. Mr. Davis said that he asked Mr. Cohen at the time why he wanted to hire him.

This is a moment, people: It’s a major crossroads in Donald J. Trump’s presidency. (If you read only one section, make it pages 290-299, which detail Mr. Trump’s attempts to fire the special counsel.) This is the worst thing that ever happened to me.” [Get On Politics delivered to your inbox.] The report notes, though, that the tapes were likely “fake.” The report also details a search by Mr. Trump’s associates for Hillary Clinton’s deleted emails, which Mr. Trump, in July 2016, publicly asked Russia to help him obtain. What about the obstruction investigation? “If we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the president clearly did not commit obstruction of justice,” they wrote, “we would so state.” Here’s some of what they’re describing: • For 13 days after Mr. Trump asked Mr. Finally, on May 30, the president returned the letter with a notation: “Not accepted.” • Mr. Trump repeatedly called Donald F. McGahn II, the White House counsel, at home and ordered that he have Mr. Mueller removed. The two-volume document is a redacted version of the report written by Mr. Mueller, the special counsel, presenting the findings of his team’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, and into Mr. Trump’s possible effort to influence the outcome. Mr. Barr, the attorney general, released a four-page summary of Mr. Mueller’s report last month, in which he said the investigation did not find that the Trump campaign had colluded with the Russian government and cleared the president of the charge of obstruction of justice. A lot of Democrats were skeptical of Mr. Barr’s summary — particularly on the obstruction issue — and pushed for the release of the full report.

Mueller report reveals text messages showing the Trump campaign was privately aware as early as October 2016 — more than two months before BuzzFeed News published the Steele dossier — that embarrassing tapes of then-candidate Donald Trump might exist in Russia. According to the report, on October 30th, 2016, Trump’s private attorney and fixer Michael Cohen received a text from a Russian businessman involved in the Trump Tower Moscow deal, in progress for more than a year. Cohen told investigators he spoke to Trump about the issue after receiving the texts from Rtskhiladze. Rtskhiladze’s description of the tapes’ content tracks with the unverified information included in the Steele dossier, which claimed that Trump watched Russian prostitutes urinate in a Moscow hotel room in 2013. “Rtskhiladze said ‘tapes’ referred to compromising tapes of Trump rumored to be held by persons associated with the Russian real estate conglomerate Crocus Group, which had helped host the 2013 Miss Universe Pageant in Russia.” The Crocus Group’s president is Aras Agalarov. It was Agalarov’s son, the Russian pop star Emin Agalarov, who brokered the June 9th, 2016 Trump Tower meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and a Kremlin-linked lawyer, who promised to deliver “official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary.” Besides the Trump Tower Moscow project, the report also says Rtskhiladze was involved in discussions for a Trump-branded project in Astana, Kazakhstan, and had previously been involved in a development deal with the Trump Organization in Batumi, Georgia. Separately, the report says Rtskhiladze had worked on business ventures in Moscow, including a licensing deal with the Agalarov-owned Crocus Group. According to the report, Cohen forwarded a preliminary design study for the Trump Moscow project to Rtskhiladze, in September 2015 writing, “I look forward to your reply about this spectacular project in Moscow.” Rtskhiladze forwarded Cohen’s email to an associate and wrote, “[i]f we could organize the meeting in New York at the highest level of the Russian Government and Mr. Trump this project would definitely receive the worldwide attention.” In his book, A Higher Loyalty, James Comey wrote that after he briefed Trump, the then-president-elect asked him to investigate and prove the report was a lie. “He brought up what he called the ‘golden showers thing’…adding that it bothered him if there was ‘even a one percent chance’ his wife, Melania, thought it was true,” Comey writes. “He just rolled on, unprompted, explaining why it couldn’t possibly be true, ending by saying he was thinking of asking me to investigate the allegation to prove it was a lie.

Expected Soon: House Oversight Committee Republicans hold a press conference on their plans regarding the information given to them by President Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen. FOX News operates the FOX News Channel (FNC), FOX Business Network (FBN), FOX News…

The Washington Post has obtained evidence that Trump inflated his net worth to entice lenders and investors. Tim O'Brien and Rick Wilson join to discuss. » Subscribe to MSNBC: http://on.msnbc.com/SubscribeTomsnbc MSNBC delivers breaking news and in-depth analysis of the headlines,…

Federal prosecutors reportedly have new questions about possible conversations between Trump's attorneys and Michael Cohen on the topic of pardons. Our panel discusses. » Subscribe to MSNBC: http://on.msnbc.com/SubscribeTomsnbc MSNBC delivers breaking news and in-depth analysis of the headlines, as well…

Joyce Vance, former U.S. attorney, talks with Rachel Maddow about whether it is significant that eight of the 16 state charges against Paul Manafort are akin to what Donald Trump and the Trump Organization are implicated in in the SDNY…

Rep. Adam Schiff reacts to Paul Manafort's prison sentence and new charges, Trump's dangling of pardons, and new claims Trump may have tried to interfere in the Cohen investigation. Rep. Schiff tells Lawrence it looks like a "growing body of…