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Michael Cohen made a surprise appearance before a US District Judge who asked him to plead his case.
Former Donald Trump attorney Michael Cohen pleaded guilty Thursday in New York to having lied in Congress over a Moscow real estate project such as Trump and his company went on at the same time as he was getting the GOP appointment in 2016.
In a nine-page document, prosecutors exposed a litany of lies that Cohen admitted telling Congressional lawmakers about the Moscow project – an attempt, Cohen said that to minimize the links between the proposed development project and Trump as his candidacy for the presidency gained ground.
Cohen made a surprise appearance Thursday morning before US District Judge Andrew Carter Jr., who asked him to make his case.
"Guilty, your honor," replied Cohen. As part of his argument, Cohen claimed to have lied to the person named in the court documents as "Particular 1" – whom Cohen identified as Trump.
"I knew that the repeated disavowal of trade and political relations between himself and Russia, his repeated statements that investigations of such links were politically motivated and without evidence, and that any contact with Russian nationals by the Individual 1 campaign or the Trump Organization had ended before the Iowa Caucus, which was held on February 1, 2016, "Cohen told the judge.
To pinpoint Trump's public denials, Cohen stated that he had knowingly given false answers to the Senate and House Intelligence Committees in 2017. "
" I have corrected these inaccuracies with the individual statements. Political Message of 1 and Loyalty to the Individual 1, "he told the crowded audience room in Lower Manhattan.
Cohen's guilty plea – his second in four months – is the latest development.Robert Mueller III, a special council, has opened an extensive investigation into the interference of Russia in the presidential election of 2016. The activity within the framework of this survey is is intensified this week as a planned guilty plea had been derailed and, separately, prosecutors had accused former Trump campaign president Paul Manafort of lying to them since he pleaded guilty. [19659003Cohen'sappealthreatenstofurthercoolrelationsbetweentheWhiteHouseandtheJusticeDepartmentwhereActingAttorneyGeneralMatthewWhitakerhasbeeninofficeforseveralweekssincethePresidentforcedJeffSesstoresignfromhispositionasAttorneyGeneral
The policies of the Department of Justice and the regulations of its special council invite the Attorney General to: be informed of important events in such investigations, and a person familiar with the case, said that Whitaker had been informed in advance of Cohen's plea.
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. that year, the document says. It was a critical period of the presidential campaign, when Trump was pbading in front of a group of overcrowded GOP candidates to win the nomination. According to the document, Trump has been informed more than three times about the status of the project.
Trump repeatedly stated that he had no business relationship in Russia. He tweeted in July 2016: "For the record, I have ZERO investments in Russia" and telling reporters, in January 2017, that there was no market there, because it "stayed away".
After the plea, Trump told reporters in the White House that Cohen was "a weak person" and insisted that he himself had done nothing wrong.
"Michael Cohen lies and tries 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 if I did it."
Speaking of 2016, Trump added, "There was a good chance that I would not have won, in which case I would have gone into 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 is not a coincidence that the special council has again laid a charge just as the president is leaving for a meeting with world leaders at the G20 summit in Argentina," Giuliani said in a statement. statement, noting that Mueller had also disclosed the charges against him before the president left the country. a summit in Helsinki in July.
Rep. Adam Schiff, Calif., Senior official of the House Intelligence Committee, said the guilty plea showed that the president had not told the truth about his business interests in Russia during the campaign.
"We believe that other witnesses have told the truth to our committee," said Schiff. . "We want to share these transcripts with Mr. Mueller." In particular, Schiff quoted Trump's advisor, Roger Stone, among those whose answers were "far from truthful"
During the campaign, Cohen was Trump's privileged interlocutor in discussions 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.
He had previously stated that the project was blocked in January 2016, prompting him to send an e-mail to one of the main collaborators of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Cohen had previously stated that he had never received a response and that the project was interrupted that month.
In fact, according to the dossier filed Thursday, the Russians responded, and Cohen discussed this project over the phone for 20 minutes with an badistant. to Dmitry Peskov, Putin's chief badistant. At the time, Cohen was asking for help to secure his land and his funding.
Peskov did not respond to a request for comment on Thursday.
Prosecutors seemed to want to point out in the document that Cohen had spoken to Trump – who they did not name – on the draft. The document stated that Cohen had lied because he hoped his testimony would limit ongoing investigations in Russia.
Prosecutors also said that Cohen had continued to have contacts until the summer of 2016 with Felix Sater, a Russian-born developer who was involved 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 an economic conference in St. Petersburg, baduring him that he could be introduced to Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, chief financial officer and possibly Putin, The Post reported. Sater has been cooperating with the special attorney 's investigation for more than a year, providing emails and other documents, said people familiar with the investigation.
A Sater lawyer did not respond to a request for comment.
According to criminal reports filed by prosecutors, Cohen sent a letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee in which he "knowingly and deliberately" made false statements, including that the Moscow project "ended in January 2016 and had not been the subject of in-depth discussions … other 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 testified before the committee that he had discussed the project with Trump only three times and that all discussions had ended in January 2016. In fact Court record, the discussions continued until 2016, and Cohen spoke more than three times with Trump about the project and also informed Trump's family members.
The document also states that Cohen had discussed in May 2016 the possibility that he would travel to Russia before the Republican National Convention and that individual 1 could go there after the convention.
Then, about a month later, he met "the 2 individual" – which, according to people who knew the case well was Sater – in the lobby of The Trump company headquarters will inform Sater that he would not go to Russia after all, according to the court document. The Washington Post announced that Russian government hackers stole data from the Democratic National Committee on June 14, 2016 –
According to federal sentencing guidelines, Cohen would be sentenced to six years in prison month. top of the page and no prison term at the lowest 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.
Outside the courthouse Thursday, Guy Petrillo, Cohen's lawyer, said, "Mr. Cohen has cooperated, Mr. Cohen continue to cooperate." Petrillo said the sentence in the case would be fixed to December 12th.
million. Cohen did not say anything, the reporters shouted to him questions.
In August, Cohen, 52, pleaded guilty to campaigning violations related to pre-election payments. women who claimed to have had relationships with Trump years earlier. 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 also pleaded guilty to multiple counts of tax evasion and bank fraud. to his personal finances and managing taxi medallions in New York.
Cohen worked as a lawyer at the highest rank of Trump and his real estate company for a decade. After taking office Trump, Cohen left the company and became the president's personal attorney, along with consulting clients including AT & T, Novartis and a New York-based company that manages the badets of a company. Russian billionaire.
collaborators, he has taken a radical turn against the president in recent months. Cohen described himself as Trump's pit bull and was delighted to swear with the enemies of the celebrity business executive, claiming in the past that he would take a "ball" for his long-time boss. dated.
But after pleading guilty, his conscience required him to tell him 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 Mueller. the team, and was spotted recently arrived in Washington for additional meetings with his legal team.
(With the exception of the title, this story has not been altered by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated thread.)
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