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Let’s hear it for the ‘salacious’-as Trump’s GOP defenders dismiss it-and ‘dodgy’-as the dodgy Carter Page calls it-Steele Dossier. It turns out something can be ‘salacious’ and ‘dodgy’ and also be accurate. Cohen on the other hand claimed he’d never been to Prague which it turns out was yet another lie by Trump’s thuggish ‘lawyer.’
FN: I’ve actually revised my view pretty stronglyi on this question of the Dossier’s assertion of Cohen going to Prague-see below for more.
When the dossier came out he had tweeted out a picture of what was supposedly his stamped passport-it was never clear what it was supposed to prove; presumably that as the page he took the picture of didn’t mention him visiting Prague, he must not have-though this was not really conclusive. On the other hand, there was no evidence that he had visited Prague in 2016-though evidence did emerge that he’d visited the country back in 2003.
Still that was a few years back and while it made Cohen’s categorical claim technically untrue, there was no evidence he did visit in 2016. So because his visit there had not been proven he and the other Trump apologists argued that because this had not been proven, the entire dossier was effectively disproven-though this doesn’t logically follow, and significant aspects of it in fact since have been proven.
But yesterday we learned that Mueller now has is evidence that Cohen did visit Prague in 2016.
“The Justice Department special counsel has evidence that Donald Trump’s personal lawyer and confidant, Michael Cohen, secretly made a late-summer trip to Prague during the 2016 presidential campaign, according to two sources familiar with the matter.”
“Confirmation of the trip would lend credence to a retired British spy’s report that Cohen strategized there with a powerful Kremlin figure about Russian meddling in the U.S. election.”
“It would also be one of the most significant developments thus far in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of whether the Trump campaign and the Kremlin worked together to help Trump win the White House. Undercutting Trump’s repeated pronouncements that “there is no evidence of collusion,” it also could ratchet up the stakes if the president tries, as he has intimated he might for months, to order Mueller’s firing.
This is very significant for a few reasons:
1. It catches him in yet another major lie; he had-falsely-argued that the entire dossier was undermined if it couldn’t be proven that he visited Prague. Now it has been and this by the same token puts everything he says into question. T’he dossier credibility is heightened while his own takes another hit.
2. But it also begs the question: what was he was doing in Prague? No doubt his next move is to assure us that his visit to Prague was wholly innocent; but then why did he lie about it for the last 15 months?
UPDATE: He has maintained through being indicted, convicted, and sentenced for 3 years that he ‘never went to Prague’-which is itself false-as there is evidence he visited in 2003. As for 2016 that remains neither confirmed nor debunked.
“Cohen has vehemently denied for months that he ever has been in Prague or colluded with Russia during the campaign. Neither he nor his lawyer responded to requests for comment for this story.”
“It’s unclear whether Mueller’s investigators also have evidence that Cohen actually met with a prominent Russian – purportedly Konstantin Kosachev, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin — in the Czech capital. Kosachev, who chairs the Foreign Affairs Committee of a body of the Russian legislature, the Federation Council, also has denied visiting Prague during 2016. Earlier this month, Kosachev was among 24 high-profile Russians hit with stiff U.S. sanctions in retaliation for Russia’s meddling.”
Presumably, Kosachev’s denials of visiting Prague during the campaign are worth just as much as Cohen’s were.
Anyway, now we see why a visit to Prague wasn’t mentioned on the picture of the passport he tweeted out:
“But investigators have traced evidence that Cohen entered the Czech Republic through Germany, apparently during August or early September of 2016 as the ex-spy reported, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is confidential. He wouldn’t have needed a passport for such a trip, because both countries are in the so-called Schengen Area in which 26 nations operate with open borders. The disclosure still left a puzzle: The sources did not say whether Cohen took a commercial flight or private jet to Europe, and gave no explanation as to why no record of such a trip has surfaced.”
He wouldn’t have needed a passport to visit Prague from the route he took.
When the news site Buzzfeed published the entire dossier on Jan. 11, Trump denounced the news organization as “a failing pile of garbage” and said the document was “false and fake.” Cohen tweeted, “I have never been to Prague in my life. #fakenews.”
Turns out the ‘fake news’ is that he didn’t visit Prague in 2016.
“Last August, an attorney for Cohen, Stephen Ryan, delivered to Congress a point-by-point rebuttal of the dossier’s allegations, stating: “Mr. Cohen is not aware of any ‘secret TRUMP campaign/Kremlin relationship.’”
Again now that he know he was lying about Prague all such categorical denials lack credibility.
FN: Certainly to claim no awareness of a Trump campaign/Kremlin relationship was a lie-he would be charged for denying it in his House testimony-perjury. In fact he’d been the campaign conduit for Trump to Russia on the project to build a Trump Tower Moscow.
The Dems in Congress have also been skeptical Cohen told Congress the whole truth.
“However, Democratic investigators for the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, which are conducting parallel inquiries into Russia’s election interference, also are skeptical about whether Cohen was truthful about his 2016 travels to Europe when he was interviewed by the panels last October, two people familiar with those probes told McClatchy this week. Cohen has publicly acknowledged making three trips to Europe that year – to Italy in July, England in early October and a third after Trump’s November election. The investigators intend to press Cohen for more information, said the sources, who lacked authorization to speak for the record
“One of the sources said congressional investigators have “a high level of interest” in Cohen’s European travel, with their doubts fueled by what they deem to be weak documentation Cohen has provided about his whereabouts around the time the Prague meeting was supposed to have occurred.”
“Cohen has said he was only in New York and briefly in Los Angeles during August, when the meeting may have occurred, though the sources said it also could have been held in early September.”
Evidence that Cohen was in Prague “certainly helps undermine his credibility,” said Jill Wine-Banks, a former Watergate prosecutor who lives in Chicago. “It doesn’t matter who he met with. His denial was that I was never in Prague. Having proof that he was is, for most people, going to be more than enough to say I don’t believe anything else he says.”
I mean if he was in Prague but for reasons innocent and unrelated to Russia that’s what he should have said. But for 15 months he’s been lying which makes you a little skeptical he was there for innocent and unrelated reasons.
FN: But-see Chapter A-I’ve come to strongly suspect he denials regarding Prague and Russian collusion were not lies-he was involved with the hush money payments and the project with Felix Sater to build a Trump Tower Moscow but have come around to Marcy Wheeler’s belief that the claim in the Dossier that he was sort of the ringleader on collusion is a canard-a piece of deliberate Russian misinformation-if there was such a ringleader clearly it was Manafort; indeed, McClatchy mentioned Kilimnik-it’s clear that Manafort was the Russian intel operative’s point person in the campaign not Cohen-there’s no reason to believe there’s any relationship between Kilimnik and Cohen.
As for payments to hackers that was the late Peter Smith’s department.
As Wine-Banks goes on to say-considering the relationship between Herr Trump and Cohen it’s also not credible Trump didn’t know about his visit. Certainly any denials Cohen wants to make about Trump’s knowledge won’t be persuasive.
We’ll see how Cohen ends up trying to explain what he did on this trip. According to the not so dodgy dossier, Cohen actually meant with some Russians and some Eastern European hackers and discussed cash payments to hackers working under Kremlin direction to undermine the Clinton campaign.
“The dossier alleges that Cohen, two Russians and several Eastern European hackers met at the Prague office of a Russian government-backed social and cultural organization, Rossotrudnichestvo. The location was selected to provide an alternative explanation in case the rendezvous was exposed, according to Steele’s Kremlin sources, cultivated during 20 years of spying on Russia. It said that Oleg Solodukhin, the deputy chief of Rossotrudnichestvo’s operation in the Czech Republic, attended the meeting, too.”
“Further, it alleges that Cohen, Kosachev and other attendees discussed “how deniable cash payments were to be made to hackers in Europe who had worked under Kremlin direction against the Clinton campaign.”
One reason evidence of his visit to Prague hasn’t emerged till now is that he and others who planned it did a lot to ensure evidence wouldn’t emerge.
“As for deniable cash payments-this is Cohen’s speciality. In the last few days more payments have emerged: an alleged $30,000 dollar payment to a doorman to keep quiet about Trump’s alleged love child from the 1980s. “
“A major donor with close ties to the White House resigned on Friday as deputy finance chairman of the Republican National Committee after the revelation that he had agreed to pay $1.6 million to a former Playboy model who became pregnant during an affair.”
“The deal was arranged in the final months of 2017 by President Trump’s personal lawyer and fixer, Michael D. Cohen.”
“Under the terms of the deal, the Republican donor, Elliott Broidy, would pay the woman in installments over the course of two years, and she would agree to stay silent about their relationship, two people with knowledge of the arrangement told The New York Times. The deal was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.”
But but but-I thought the GOP was the party of prolife! In this context, it’s important to remember that Cohen is not just Trump’s ‘lawyer’-he’s not any kind of conventional lawyer; he’s Sammy the Bull’s lawyer-he also until very recently was the deputy finance chair of the RNC.
Back to McClatchy:
“Citing information from an unnamed “Kremlin insider,” Steele’s dossier says the Prague meeting agenda also included discussion “in cryptic language for security reasons,” of ways to “sweep it all under the carpet and make sure no connection could be fully established or proven.” Romanians were among the hackers present, it says, and the discussion touched on using Bulgaria as a location where they could “lie low.”
“It is a felony for anyone to hack email accounts. Other laws forbid foreigners from contributing cash or in-kind services to U.S. political campaigns.”
So apparently the dossier was right about Cohen visiting Prague. If it turns out to be right about what he did there-and certainly the ‘dodgy dossier’ is certainly a lot more credible than Cohen at this point-this is the clearest picture yet of Trump campaign collusion with Russia’s interference.
“If Cohen met with Russians and hackers in Prague as described in the dossier, it would provide perhaps the most compelling evidence to date that the Russians and Trump campaign aides were collaborating. Mueller’s office also has focused on two meetings in the spring of 2016 when Russians offered to provide Trump campaign aides with “dirt” on Clinton – thousands of emails in one of the offers.”
UPDATE: I’ve added the word apparently to this chapter as the claim that Mueller has evidence of Cohen going to Prague has not yet been publicly corroborated. But inferentially, there’s a strong case Cohen went to Prague or another former Soviet satellite-possibly to pay off the hackers because if this story was false, why did Cohen very soon after withdraw his lawsuit against Buzzfeed for publishing the dossier?
And in August, Cohen’s attorney, Lanny Davis had suggested Cohen had direct evidence of collusion but then considerably backed off. Most of the media has presumed that Davis’ subsequent walk back was the truth but how are you so sure his initial assertion isn’t the truth?
To be sure, Davis has additionally come out and categorically insisted that Cohen didn’t go to Prague. But as argued in Chapter A this may be because he said too much and denied this to get on the better side of Mueller again
FN: As I argue in chapter B I now believe that Davis was simply referring to Cohen overhearing Stone tell Trump about the coming DNC email dump on July 18 or 19-it would be released on the 22.
Based on all we know now Manafort not Cohen was the point person on Russian collusion.
Speaking of Buzzfeed they had a major piece on Trump-Russia in early May, 2018: Trump Moscow: The Definitive Story Of How Trump’s Team Worked The Russian Deal During The Campaign
Seth Abramson had some thoughts on it:
2/ Here is the article, which would have 100% more scoops in it if its authors had talked to someone with Trump-Russia timeline expertise before publishing. https://t.co/hRQDuA4X4q
— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) May 17, 2018
4/ But Buzzfeed has some great scoops. FBI agents saying Cohen was in touch with Russian actors involved in election interference? That's yet another confirmation of a key Steele Dossier claim. It also suggests the '15 deal may have been a front for Russian election coordination.
— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) May 17, 2018
Buzzfeed proved 100% right about the timeline on the Trump Tower Moscow deal-Cohen, in his cooperation with Mueller admits that he lied when he claimed the deal died in January, 2016 before the Iowa primary-in fact it continued through to June and only ended after the first story about the DNC being hacked-yet another ‘amazing coincidence.’
UPDATE: Cohen went on to be charged with perjury for lying to Congress about when the Trump Tower Moscow deal ended.
UPDATE 2.0: It’s certainly interesting that the project on Trump Tower Moscow ended around the time that the story of the DNC hack was first reported. Having said that as I argue above, I do agree with Marcy Wheeler that the outsize role that the Dossier gives Cohen on Russian collusion has been debunked.
Of course, the fact of this coincidence that we now know gives further plausibility to the idea that the deal was a front for Russia election coordination.
UPDATE 2.0: This is further inferred by the fact that TT Moscow deal really ended after Guccifer leaked the Democratic emails. Again such amazing ‘coincidences’ take a lot of planning; though Rudy Giuliani later suggested and had to walk back that the TT deal was still being worked on until the election and beyond.
FN: It seems that the effort to build a TT Moscow may have continued through and after the 2016 election-that Papaodpoulos-AKA the very much glorified Coffee Boy-may have picked up the baton-Chapter C.
Then as we saw in Chapter A that Cohen reportedly met with a Russian oligarch just 11 days before the election-an infamous day, Comey Letter Day, another day that will live in infamy.
Then there was the report that we looked at in Chapter A-that CNN still stands by-that Cohen has told others that he witnessed Donald Jr tell his father about the Trump Tower deal. This is why the refrain of the Trump and his co-conspirators is-it’s nothing to do with collusion just making payments to a stripper doesn’t even pass the laugh test: it’s pretty clear that what Cohen has been publicly charged with so far is just the tip of the iceberg.
Overall, we have maybe 5% of the total story on collusion. NBC had a new report last Friday that the Mueller investigation will be over ‘soon’-where soon is described as ‘early as late February.’
What I think is clear is the report, whenever it’s released, will be a bombshell. What we know is damning enough-like the emails between Jerome Corsi and Roger Stone between July and October of the 2016 election where Stone clearly asked for and received information from Assange and where it’s also clear that Stone was in regular contact with Trump and the Trump campaign-but it’s just a drop in the bucket.
UPDATE. Now after seeing Roger Stone’s indictment memo we know that a top senior Trump campaign aide in directed Stone-who then directed Corsi-to find out what else Wikileaks had in late July-in Chapter A I argue it’s quite plausible it was Manafort but as Seth Abramson argues the MSM has ruled any link between Manafort and Assange FAKE NEWS