How Michael Cohen's Plea Deal Implicates Donald Trump Jr.
I think I want this little smarty pants brought down as much as I want Trump brought down.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/opinion-donald-trump-jr-mueller-investigation_us_5c0162cde4b0d04f48b3c882
11/30/2018 02:34 pm ET Updated 3 hours ago
How Michael Cohen’s Plea Deal Implicates Donald Trump Jr.
Marcy Wheeler Guest Writer
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Donald Trump Jr.'s claims that he knew little about Russian talks seem inconsistent with Michael Cohen's latest plea agreemen William Campbell via Getty Images
When Donald Trump Jr. was interviewed by the Senate Judiciary Committee in September of last year ― a conversation that mostly focused on the infamous June 9, 2016, Trump Tower meeting in which Russians were supposedly going to offer dirt on Hillary Clinton ― he claimed to know “very little” about talks to establish a Trump Tower in Moscow. He claimed to be “peripherally aware” of the negotiations, but said he did not know of Trump lawyer Michael Cohen’s outreach to the Kremlin seeking President Vladimir Putin’s help on the deal until that news had been reported by the press.
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More importantly, it puts the June gathering at Trump Tower in New York in a dramatically different light. The email that Goldstone sent to set up the meeting included a line describing his offer of dirt as being part of other Russian support for Trump. The dirt he was offering, Goldstone asserted, “is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.” That email means one thing if ― as Don Jr. claimed ― he didn’t really know that his father might gain a huge real estate development by sidling up to Russians. It means something entirely different if Don Jr. knew, as Cohen’s plea strongly suggests he did, about ongoing discussions regarding the Moscow project that relied on the support not just of Russian bureaucrats, but of Putin himself.
Furthermore, the timing laid out in Cohen’s plea hints that there may be an even closer tie. In the immediate wake of the Trump Tower meeting, at the end of which several attendees believed that Don Jr. had promised to consider eliminating Magnitsky Act sanctions against Russians if his father got elected, Cohen and Sater finalized a trip to St. Petersburg, where Cohen expected he might meet Putin. “From on or about June 9 to June 14, 2016,” the plea deal says, Sater “sent numerous messages to COHEN about the travel, including forms for COHEN to complete.” Something happened at the last minute to change Cohen’s mind. On June 14, the same day The Washington Post revealed that Russians had hacked the Democratic National Committee, Cohen met Sater in the lobby of Trump Tower and said he would “not be traveling at that time.”
At least in Sater’s mind, the Moscow project was always connected to the presidential election. “Buddy our boy can become President of the USA and we can engineer it,” Sater emailed Cohen in November 2015. “I will get Putins [sic] team to buy in on this, I will manage this process.”
With Cohen’s negotiations to set up meetings with Putin in the background, the case that Don Jr. was discussing a deal in which Russia would provide dirt and facilitate a real estate project in exchange for sanctions relief gets far stronger.
Mueller’s not there yet, at least with the information he’s made public. But with Cohen’s plea, he’s inching closer to laying out a complex conspiracy in which Russians offered stolen emails and real estate in exchange for sanctions relief, with the president’s son at the center of everything.
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