Trump Defends Moscow Pursuits

News  |  Nov 30, 2018

President Trump, identified as "Individual 1" in the criminal information accompanying Special Counsel Robert Mueller's plea agreement with Michael Cohen, has vacillated between lashing out at Cohen and calling him a liar and defending his own pursuit of Trump Tower Moscow while running for president. 

 

tweet

 

tweet2

Reuters

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly played down his business ties with Russia. 

(...)

Democrats and other critics said the latest revelations from Mueller’s investigation showed Trump put his business interests above his obligation to speak truthfully to voters.

Washington Post

Trump, identified as “Individual 1” in Cohen’s guilty plea, was said to have received direct updates from Cohen as he pursued a Moscow Trump Tower project with the Kremlin up until June 14, 2016. 

Reuters:

Trump has given slightly differing accounts of his Moscow business ties over time. In July 2016, he tweeted: “For the record, I have ZERO investments in Russia.” A day later he claimed, “I have nothing to do with Russia.”

In January 2017, he told a reporter: “I have no deals that could happen in Russia, because we’ve stayed away.”

Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, said Thursday that the president’s written answers to Mueller about the Moscow project, which he submitted just before Thanksgiving, conform with Cohen’s version of events. 

(...)

Alan Dershowitz, a Trump ally and constitutional lawyer, said Cohen’s confessions don’t suggest Trump committed any crime but could suggest that Trump wasn’t telling the public the whole truth about the Moscow deal.

Washington Post:

Some legal experts argued Mueller appears to be drawing a picture of a candidate who was beholden to the Kremlin. Emails released in the Cohen plea show Trump seeking a financial endorsement from the Russian government on a private project while Russian President Vladi­mir Putin was offering to say flattering things about Trump.

“It creates the potential for Trump to feel an obligation to pay back President Putin, or Russia in general that . . . do not put the best interests of America forward,” [former federal prosecutor Glen] Kopp said. “You are creating a potential vulnerability for a future leader of America.”

Trump defends Russia business dealings as U.S. probe widens (Reuters)

‘Individual 1’: Trump emerges as a central subject of Mueller probe (Washington Post)