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Michael Cohen made a surprise appearance before a US District Judge who asked him to register his plea.
Former Donald Trump attorney Michael Cohen pleaded guilty Thursday in New York to having lied in Congress over a Moscow real estate project being pursued by Trump and his company at the same time he was being nominated for the GOP in 2016.
In a nine-page document, prosecutors exposed a litany of lies that President Cohen confessed to Congress lawmaker about the Moscow project – an attempt, Cohen said, to downplay the links between the development project and Trump , while his candidacy for the presidency gained ground.
Cohen made a surprise appearance Thursday morning before US judge Andrew Carter Jr., who asked him to plead.
"Guilty, your honor," said Cohen. As part of his oral argument, Cohen claimed to have lied to the person named in the court documents as "Particular 1" – whom Cohen had identified in court as Trump.
"I was aware of the repeated disavowal of trade and political relations between himself and Russia, repeated badertions that investigations of such links were politically motivated and without evidence, and that any contact with nationals Russians by the Individual 1 campaign or by the Trump organization had all ended before the Iowa caucus, which was on February 1, 2016, "Cohen told the judge.
To pinpoint Trump's public denials of such connections, Cohen said he knowingly gave false answers in 2017 to Senate and House intelligence committees.
"I've corrected these inaccuracies with the political message of the individual 1 and out of loyalty to the individual 1," he told the crowded Lower Manhattan audience room. .
Cohen's guilty plea – his second in four months – is the latest development of an extensive investigation by special advocate Robert Mueller III on Russia's interference in the election. The activities in this investigation intensified this week, with a plea of guilty plotted derailed and, separately, prosecutors accused former Trump campaign president Paul Manafort of lied, since he had pleaded guilty.
Cohen's call risks further cooling relations between the White House and the Justice Department, where interim Attorney General Matthew Whitaker has been in office for several weeks since the president forced Jeff Sessions to leave his position as Attorney General.
The policies of the Department of Justice and the regulations of the special advocates provide for the Attorney General to be informed of significant developments in such inquiries. A person familiar with the case said that Whitaker had been informed in advance of Cohen's application.
As part of his plea, Cohen admitted to falsely claiming that efforts to build a Trump brand tower in Moscow ended in January 2016, when discussions continued until June of the same year. , says the document. It was a critical period of the presidential campaign when Trump was trying to sneak past an overcrowded group of GOP candidates to win the nomination. Among people informed by Cohen of the status of the project was Trump, more than three times, according to the document.
Trump repeatedly said that he had no business relationship in Russia. He had tweeted in July 2016: "For the record, I have no investment in Russia", and told reporters in January 2017 that he had not entered into a deal there because he had "stayed away".
After the oral argument, Trump told reporters at the White House that Cohen was "a weak person" and had insisted that he had done nothing wrong.
"Michael Cohen is lying and trying to get a reduced sentence for things that do not concern me at all," said the president. "It was a project we had not done, not me either … there would be nothing wrong with it if I did it."
Speaking of 2016, Trump added: "There was a good chance I would not have won, in which case I would be back in the business and why should I lose a lot of opportunities? "
Trump's lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, suggested that Mueller's timing was motivated by political considerations.
"It's no coincidence that the special advocate has again filed a charge just as the president is going for a meeting with world leaders at the G20 summit in Argentina," Giuliani said in a statement. a statement, noting that Mueller had also revealed charges before the president's departure. the country for a summit in Helsinki in July.
Representative of the Democratic Party of the House of Representatives, Adam Schiff, California, said the guilty plea showed that the president was not honest about his business interests in Russia during the campaign.
"We think other witnesses have told the truth to our committee," said Schiff. "We want to share these transcripts with Mr. Mueller." Schiff quoted Trump's adviser Roger Stone as a person whose answers were "far from truthful".
During the campaign, Cohen was Trump's spokesperson in talks to build Trump's development in Moscow. Cohen said the project was in its infancy in the fall of 2015, as Trump's presidential campaign was preparing.
Earlier, Mr Cohen had said the project was stalled in January 2016, prompting him to send an e-mail to one of the key aides of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Cohen had previously stated that he had never received a response and that the project was stopped this month.
In fact, according to the dossier filed Thursday, the Russians responded and Cohen discussed the project for 20 minutes over the phone with an badistant of Dmitry Peskov, a senior aide to Putin. At the time, Cohen was looking for help in obtaining land and financing.
Peskov did not respond on Thursday to a request for comment.
Prosecutors seemed to insist in the document pointing out that Cohen had spoken of the project with Trump – whom they did not name -. According to the document, Cohen lied because he hoped his testimony would limit ongoing investigations in Russia.
Prosecutors also said that Cohen had maintained contacts until the summer of 2016 with Felix Sater, a Russian-born developer who had participated in the project. Some of these contacts have been reported for the first time by the Washington Post.
In June 2016, Sater invited Cohen to attend an economic conference in St. Petersburg, baduring him that he could be introduced to Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, to senior financial leaders and possibly to Putin, reported The Post.Sater cooperates with the special council. investigation for over a year, providing e-mails and other documents, said people familiar with the research.
A lawyer from Sater did not respond to a request for comment.
According to criminal reports filed by the prosecutors, Cohen sent a letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee in which he "knowingly and deliberately" made false statements, including that the Moscow project "was terminated in January 2016 and n & rsquo; Had not been the subject of in-depth discussions with other people in the company. "; that Cohen "never agreed to go to Russia as part of the Moscow project and never considered asking the individual 1 to move for the project"; and that Cohen "did not recall any response or any contact from the Russian government about the Moscow project".
Cohen had told the committee that he had discussed the project with Trump only three times and that all discussions had ended in January 2016. In fact, according to the court record, the discussions were would be continued until 2016, and Cohen would have spoken more than three times with Trump. on the project and also informed Trump's family members.
The document also states that Cohen discussed in May 2016 the possibility that he could go to Russia before the Republican National Convention and that individual 1 could go there after the convention.
Then, about a month later, he met "Individual 2" – which, according to people who knew the case, called Sater – in the lobby of the Trump company headquarters to tell him that # He would not go to Russia after all, according to the court document. On June 14, 2016, the Washington Post reported that Russian government hackers had stolen data from the Democratic National Committee.
According to federal sentencing guidelines, Mr. Cohen would be sentenced to six months in prison and no term of imprisonment for making false statements, according to his plea agreement. Both parties agreed not to seek punishment outside this range, provided that Cohen continues to cooperate.
Cohen's lawyer, Guy Petrillo, said in court on Thursday: "Mr. Cohen has cooperated, and Mr. Cohen will continue to cooperate." Petrillo said the sentence in the case would be set for 12 December.
Cohen did not say anything while the reporters shouted questions to him.
In August, Cohen, 52, pleaded guilty to two women who claimed to have had a relationship with Trump years ago about campaign financing. He told the court that he had arranged these payments on the order of Trump and that they were meant to keep the women silent before the presidential vote.
He had also pled guilty to several counts of tax evasion and bank fraud, in connection with his personal finances and his handling of taxi medals in New York.
Cohen has worked as a lawyer with Trump and his real estate company for a decade. After Trump took office, Cohen left the company and became the president's personal attorney, while supporting consulting clients, including AT & T, Novartis, and a New York-based company that manages the badets of a company. Russian billionaire.
Formerly one of Trump's most loyal collaborators, he has steadfastly turned against the President in recent months. Cohen described himself as Trump's pit bull and was delighted to juggle the enemies of the celebrity business executive, claiming in the past that he would "take a bullet" for his long-time boss. dated.
But after pleading guilty, he said his conscience forced him to tell the truth about Trump. Before the mid-term elections, he urged the public to vote for the Democrats, writing on Twitter that it "could be the most important vote of our lives."
In recent months, he has spent hours meeting with prosecutors, including the Mueller team, and was seen recently in Washington for additional meetings with his legal team.
(With the exception of the title, this story was not changed by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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