McClatchy DC reports exclusively Thursday evening that Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigators questioned an unnamed Trump Organization business associate this week and expressed particular interest in deals involving Michael Cohen.
Armed with subpoenas compelling electronic records and sworn testimony, Mueller’s team showed up unannounced at the home of the business associate, who was a party to multiple transactions connected to Trump’s effort to expand his brand abroad, according to persons familiar with the proceedings.
Investigators were particularly interested in interactions involving Michael D. Cohen, Trump’s longtime personal attorney and a former Trump Organization employee. Among other things, Cohen was involved in business deals secured or sought by the Trump Organization in Georgia, Kazakhstan and Russia.
The move to question business associates of the president adds a significant new element to the Mueller investigation, which began by probing whether the Trump campaign and Russia colluded in an effort to get Trump elected but has branched far beyond that.
Mueller's interest in Cohen is not new information. The Washington Post reported last month the special counsel was asking for documents and information related to a 2015 Trump Tower Moscow project as well as the circumstances surrounding Cohen's receipt of a Russia-friendly Ukrainian peace proposal. However, what is new is the reported expansion of Mueller's interest in Cohen's involvement in foreign deals beyond the Moscow development.
[Cohen's] partner in that effort was Russian émigré and former Trump Organization associate Felix Sater, whose involvement in the pursuit of a Moscow-area hotel became public last year at a time when now-President Trump was insisting that he had no business interests in Russia.
The two men have said they teamed with a Russian group called I.C. Expert Consulting, and Cohen last year provided a detailed letter to congressional investigators about the deal and why it did not come to fruition. Appearing on MSNBC last month, Sater said that the local developer had sought financing from the Russian bank VTB, a big lender in Russia but one sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department in September 2014, with its subsidiaries added to the list the following year.
Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign manager who is facing charges in both Virginia and D.C., already has argued the scope of Mueller's investigation is too broad. However, recently released documents show Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein has fortified the special counsel's authority to pursue relevant leads.
In a memo last May, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein gave Mueller authority to investigate, with his approval, unrelated crimes that surface during his inquiry. A Monday court filing by Mueller included an Aug. 2, 2017, memo in which Rosenstein listed allegations now within the scope Mueller's investigative authority. Except for Manafort's alleged financial crimes related to his Ukrainian political consulting, the remainder of the one-page list of suspected criminal activity by other figures was blacked out.
Michael Zeldin, a former top official of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, said Mueller could have grounds to investigate Trump’s overseas dealings to see whether those transactions led to relationships with Russians and election-related crimes.
Mueller also is searching for witnesses in his investigation of possible collusion. When he finds solid documentary evidence of crimes involving figures being questioned, those cases can be easy to prosecute, Zeldin said.
“And incidental to that, it might provide you leverage” to cut a deal in which those individuals become cooperating witnesses in the core investigation, he said.
Full story: Mueller probe tracking down Trump business partners, with Cohen a focus of queries (McClatchy DC)