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Donald Trump arrives in Cleveland by helicopter on July 20, 2016 for the Republican National Convention. (Jeff J Mitchell / Getty Images)
At 1:25 pm On July 17, 2016, an Alitalia jet aircraft carrying Donald Trump's longtime attorney and attorney, Michael Cohen, landed in New York City and brought him home after eight days of celebration. fiftieth anniversary in Capri and Rome.
Around 2 pm On July 20, a helicopter carrying Trump crashed into a field in downtown Cleveland, delivering the presidential candidate dramatically to the National Republican Convention, already underway.
Between those two days – while Trump was in New York and the attention of the political world was drawn to Cleveland – Cohen alleges that Trump received an important phone call from his confidant, Roger Stone, advising him of several decades, warning that WikiLeaks was planning in the days following cache emails likely to damage Hillary Clinton.
At the end of the week, shortly after Trump's acceptance of the GOP bid and the Philadelphia Democrats' convention meeting, WikiLeaks posted thousands of internal emails from the Democratic Party that would have been stolen by Russian agents.
If this is true, Cohen's account, which he provided in An affidavit before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday would be a dramatic revelation – it indicated that Trump misled the public about his knowledge of WikiLeaks' plans and, importantly, provided false written testimony. to the special advocate Robert S. Mueller III..
The existence of such a conversation could add new crucial clues that could help answer a fundamental question posed before Mueller: Were Trump or other people around him aware of Russia's efforts to interfere? in the 2016 campaign?
Donald Trump and his family attend a welcome event with teammate Mike Pence and his family at the Great Lakes Science Center on July 20, 2016 in Cleveland. (Jeff J Mitchell / Getty Images)
A careful review of the activities of the three men in the July 2016 period quoted by Cohen shows that there was a window of time in which the call could have taken place, according to public accounts and a travel itinerary that Cohen provided to the Washington Post in 2017..
However, it appears that few other publicly available information corroborates the complaint of Trump's former lawyer, who pleaded guilty to nine crimes, including lying to Congress. He provided no evidence to support his account, and Trump and Stone denied ever discussing WikiLeaks with each other.
And Cohen's testimony raises a major question: if the call took place as he described it, why was not it specifically cited by Mueller in Stone? An indictment to seven counts last month, which included other references to conversations that Stone would have had with Trump 's associates about WikiLeaks?
[Roger Stone indicted by special counsel in Russia investigation]
Cohen has sat on seven occasions with prosecutors, providing what they described as valuable and credible information.
Barbara McQuade, a former US Michigan lawyer, said the prosecutors' decision not to include a description of this appeal in the Stone indictment could indicate that "evidence is not sufficient" to corroborate Cohen's claims.
Or, she added, Mueller could retain information about such a call while continuing to develop evidence of a WikiLeaks-related plot.
According to Stone's indictment, he spoke "repeatedly" to senior Trump campaigners about the timing of the release of WikiLeaks – and lied to Congress about these conversations.
Stone, who was also charged with alleged obstruction and manipulation of witnesses, denied ever having spoken with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assemble or have prior knowledge of WikiLeaks plans. He pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Stone told The Post that he had never discussed WikiLeaks with Trump. "Mr. Cohen's statement is false," he wrote in a text published earlier this week.
Similarly, WikiLeaks has many times said that Assange and Stone never communicated, including Wednesday again, as Cohen testified. And Trump told the New York Times last month that Stone and he had never talked about WikiLeaks.
In written responses that he had submitted to Mueller in November, in response to questions from the special advocate, Trump asserted that Stone had not told him about the upcoming WikiLeaks release and that he was not Was not aware of it before, according to people close to the documents that he would have submitted. .
Trump's lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, called Cohen an unfaithful liar. In a text on Thursday, he wrote: "I can not comment on this call, if only to say it, and I see that Stone denied it was already public that Assange would make a damaging dump. "
A pivotal moment
The period in which Cohen said Trump had received Stone's warning about WikiLeaks was at the pinnacle of the GOP's primary campaign – and just as Trump was preparing to face Clinton directly in general elections.
According to prosecutors, the Russians had already hacked the Democratic Party's email accounts and were preparing to publicly disclose the contents. They had also chosen Trump as their favorite candidate and had launched a sophisticated campaign on social media to influence US voters.
On July 16, on a Saturday, Trump introduced his new Vice President, Indiana Governor Mike Pence, to a campaign event at Hilton Midtown in Manhattan.
Stone attended the event and spoke to Trump that day, according to an interview that the longtime GOP agent gave broadcaster Charlie Rose a few days later.
Stone, who had briefly worked for the campaign in 2015, but was then only an informal councilor, did not say what he had discussed with Trump, he sprang about the candidate's performance.
"He was really at his game," said Stone. "It's the best speech I've heard in a long time."
Cohen was out of the country during the Pence event. During an interview in 2017, he told The Post that he, his wife and a group of friends had traveled to Italy on the occasion of a meeting. early celebration of his birthday, which took place in August.
He provided his travel agent with the itinerary of his travel agent, which contained information on his flight, as well as the image of a text exchange dated July 15, which allegedly had place with Steve Van Zandt, the actor and musician. Cohen stated that he knew Van Zandt and that he had met her at her Rome hotel, where Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band were staying while they were performing in town.
"Congratulations on all your successes," Van Zandt wrote to Cohen, according to the text message provided by Cohen. Van Zandt could not be reached for comment.
On July 17, as Republicans began to flock to Cleveland for the party convention, Cohen was back in New York.
Traditionally, presidential candidates do not attend the early days of a party convention, they wait until the last night to formally accept the nomination.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump arrives on stage to present his wife, Melania, at the Republican National Convention on July 18, 2016. (Ricky Carioti / The Washington Post)
But in the midst of a fight among GOP delegates about Trump's appointment, he surprised attendees with a brief appearance in Cleveland on Monday night, posing on stage to present his wife, Melania.
After his speech, he returned to New York that night. The next night, he appears at the video convention of Trump Tower.
Cohen told Congress this week that he thought the conversation between Trump and Stone had been heard on Monday or Tuesday.
He said Trump was alerted by his secretary, Rhona Graff, who called Roger's on Line 1, according to Cohen's testimony before the House's oversight committee.
Trump then put Stone on the speaker, said Cohen.
Alleged Cohen Pierre He told Trump that he had just hung up on the phone with Assange and learned that a "large number of e-mails" would be published "in a few days".
"Would not it be great?" Trump replied, according to Cohen's testimony.
At that time, there were some public indications that Assange was planning to divulge information likely to cause damage to Clinton – and a clue that Russia was attacking the Democratic Party.
But exactly what was going to happen – and when – was unknown.
The previous month, June 12, Assange appeared on a British television channel and said that WikiLeaks had "emails related to Hillary Clinton" that he planned to publish.
Two days later, the Post announced that the servers of the National Democratic Committee had been hacked and that, according to the party's forensic analyzes, the Russian military intelligence services were probably the culprits.
An online character named Guccifer 2.0 then started to offer some of the stolen material online. Guccifer 2.0 was actually a front used by Russian intelligence agents, according to a July 2018 indictment of 12 Russian nationals accused of stealing and distributing the material.
Guccifer 2.0 tried unsuccessfully to send documents to WikiLeaks in June 2016, according to court documents. On July 14, Guccifer 2.0 sent the group an e-mail containing an encrypted file explaining how to access the material archives, prosecutors said.
Monday, July 18 – one of the possible dates of the call that would have occurred between Stone and Trump – said Cohen, WikiLeaks confirmed that he had recovered the archives and announced to Guccifer 2.0 that He would publish the stolen documents "this week", according to court documents.
Pierre at the convention
Throughout this week, Stone was in Cleveland, surrounded by Trump advisers, showing up at rallies, making provocative statements and appearing on television in seersucker suit with a square.
He appeared on Monday at the Citizens for Trump "America First" rally in Cleveland, apologizing for his late arrival because of what he said was a meeting with Trump staff.
Roger Stone attends a rally on July 18, 2016, the first day of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. (Spencer Platt / Getty Images)
On Wednesday, he had a long interview with Rose, who at the time hosted her own talk show and co-hosted CBS's "This Morning".
At Rose's question when he spoke with Trump for the last time, Stone replied that it was Saturday, the day of Pence's rally. This moment, if true, would run counter to Cohen's claim that Stone and Trump spoke on the phone on Monday or Tuesday.
In Rose 's interview, Stone said that he had described his role in the campaign as a "FOT – Friend of Trump".
"I do not have a title. I have no line responsibility, "he added. "But I have access to all the right people."
When asked specifically whether it meant that he had access to Trump, Stone replied, "He reminds me if I call him." According to Stone, their conversations still bore on "politics".
At one point, Cohen arrived in Cleveland, telling CNN late Wednesday night that he thought Senator Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) Had committed a "political suicide" by not fully endorsing Trump .
The next day, Trump accepted the appointment in front of an enthusiastic crowd.
WikiLeaks released Friday hacked Democrat emails, rivaling the political world.
Following the release of the emails, a Trump campaigner was "invited" to contact Stone to find out what WikiLeaks could still have about the Clinton campaign, Stone said.
Prosecutors have not revealed why the Trump campaign thought Stone was the person who would have heard of WikiLeaks.
But they noted that Stone had informed senior officials of the campaign "to the months of June and July 2016" that WikiLeaks had documents "whose disclosure would be harmful to the Clinton campaign".
Whether or not Stone has access to WikiLeaks remains a mystery. After the release of the DNC documents, he contacted two associates who, in his view, could provide a return channel to Assange, according to Stone and court documents.
On July 25, he sent an e-mail to conservative author Jerome Corsi, urging him to search for new emails that he would have heard that WikiLeaks possessed, according to a draft court document released by Corsi. And after New York-based comedian and radio host Randy Credico interviewed Assange on his August show, Stone asked for his help to learn more about the material WikiLeaks owned, according to Stone and Credico.
Corsi and Credico denied having served as a secondary channel for WikiLeaks for Stone.
During this time, Stone publicly boasted of being in touch with Assange, who lived in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.
Since the election, Stone has stated that his assertions about Assange were blank and that he never knew the details of WikiLeaks' plans, including the publication of thousands of stolen emails to the president of the Clinton campaign, John Podesta, in October 2016.
It is not clear why Stone would have needed a return channel to WikiLeaks if he had been in contact with Assange in July, because Cohen claimed to have heard Stone say so.
In December, Mueller's attorneys – not to mention the alleged appeal between Trump and Stone – wrote in a memo to the court that Cohen had provided information "consistent with the other evidence obtained" in their investigation.
Prior to Cohen's sentence to three years in prison, special advocate Jeannie Rhee told a federal judge at a hearing that he had given "credible and reliable information on fundamental issues making the subject of an investigation on Russia ".
"Rather than inflating the value of the information he gave us in what he had to provide, Mr. Cohen sought to tell us the truth. It is of the greatest value to us that we seek in our office to determine what happened, "she said.
Alice Crites and Tom Hamburger contributed to this report.
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