According to Cohen, Sekulow had urged him to use January 2016 in his original testimony to “stay on message,” and Cohen said he believed the Trump legal team wanted to use that date because it came before the Iowa caucuses that officially kick-started the Republican nomination fight Trump would go on to win later in the summer.Īsked by Schiff during the March closed-door hearing whether it would be inaccurate for Trump Jr. several times on the status of those negotiations. The Trump Tower Moscow negotiations that Cohen testified about actually continued through June 2016, and the president’s former lawyer said he briefed Trump and his family members - including Trump Jr. And when asked by Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) in March whether Sekulow knew that Cohen’s “statement about the Trump Tower negotiations ending in January that was part of your original draft was false,” Cohen replied: “Yes, sir.” Trump had prior knowledge of that meeting.”Ĭohen also provided documents to the House committee showing that Sekulow edited Cohen’s false 2017 testimony about the Trump Tower Moscow project. tell his father about the meeting before it took place. To bolster his claim, Cohen described overhearing Trump Jr. One of those potential avenues dangling in Cohen’s testimony: He believes Trump knew in advance about the June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower between his campaign’s senior staffers - Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort - and a Russian lawyer who promised the Republican presidential candidate dirt on his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton. While Trump’s lawyers downplayed the latest details from Cohen as old news that Mueller had declined to use for any prosecutions, the information nonetheless offers intriguing new lines of inquiry as House Democratic leaders address their own internal clamoring to launch impeachment proceedings against the president. The revelations - gleaned from more than 600 pages of lawmaker questions and answers with the one-time Trump loyalist - offer Democrats a chance to rekindle public attention on a Russia investigation that has been stymied in recent weeks by a White House eager to turn the page after special counsel Robert Mueller completed his probe. On a party-line vote, the Democratic-led committee released those transcripts Monday evening. Cohen - a former Trump lawyer who is serving a three-year prison sentence for perjury, campaign-finance violations, and tax and bank fraud crimes - answered questions from committee members for more than 16 hours over a two-day period.
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