Michael Cohen has accused President Trump of instructing him to lie to Congress about when negotiations ended to build a Trump Tower in Russia, it’s been claimed.
In documents filed late Thursday night, Cohen’s legal team reportedly claim Trump used ‘coded’ language to encourage the disgraced lawyer to lie under oath and say the Moscow tower project had ended by January 31, 2016.
Cohen’s attorneys, Lanny Davis and Michael Monico, said the president urged their client ‘during various conversations’ to say there was ‘no collusion, no Russian contacts, nothing about Russia’ after the start of the campaign, according to BuzzFeed.
Former Donald Trump fixer Michael Cohen has claimed the president used coded language to encourage him to lie under oath, according to reports
In documents filed late Thursday night, Cohen’s legal team reportedly claim Trump urged his former lawyer to tell Congress negotiations to build a Trump Tower in Moscow ended in January 2016
The revelations come in a 12-page memo sent to senior House Democrats in a bid to have his three-year prison sentence reduced.
‘Cohen explained that he was, in effect, instructed to lie about the January 31, 2016 date through the use of Trump code words that could only be interpreted as an instruction or “directive”,’ the memo states, ‘to cover-up the fact that Cohen had been in contact with Russians during most of the presidential campaign, from the day of the Iowa caucuses, February 1, through all the primaries and caucuses and until June 2016, after Trump had become the putative Republican nominee by assembling a majority of delegates.’
The memo also claims Trump’s attorney called Cohen and congratulated him for lying to the House and Senate Intelligence committees, and said the then-Republican frontrunner was ‘happy with Cohen’s testimony’, according to the news outlet.
If true, the memo corroborates a beleaguered BuzzFeed report published in January.
Cohen, (left), claimed his former boss Donald Trump, (right), ‘was happy’ after he gave false testimony and that Trump’s attorney ‘congratulated him for lying’
BuzzFeed claimed Cohen admitted that Trump explicitly ordered him to lie about the Moscow tower plans ending long before Trump looked like winning the Republican primary.
It also claimed special counsel Robert Mueller possessed documentation of it.
When the story broke, Democrats called for Trump’s impeachment, and Mueller publicly slammed the report as inaccurate.
‘BuzzFeed’s description of specific statements to the special counsel’s office, and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office, regarding Michael Cohen’s congressional testimony are not accurate,’ said Peter Carr, a spokesman for Mueller, less than a day after the story was reported.
Speaking to reporters at the White House at the time, Press Secretary Sarah Sanders called the Buzzfeed story’s allegation ‘absolutely ridiculous’ and ‘categorically false’.
The new memo is also said to detail a planned trip for Trump to visit Moscow for negotiations in August 2016 – seven months after the president claims correspondence with Russia stopped.
‘In May 2016, Cohen told Trump he could travel to Russia to assist the building of the project either before or after the GOP Convention in August, and Trump agreed,’ Cohen’s attorneys wrote.
Michael Cohen (with his lawyer, Michael Monico) also claims Trump agreed to fly to Russia in May 2016 to move negotiations on, it’s claimed
The planned trip never went ahead, but Cohen’s legal team reportedly said it serves as ‘further evidence that the trip to Russia was under serious consideration after Trump approved it’.
The memo is also said to accuse Ivanka Trump of knowing about Cohen’s false testimony to Congress.
Cohen’s attorneys said Ivanka had been in talks to sponsor a health spa at the top of the Moscow Trump Tower.
A spokesperson for Ivanka Trump previously told BuzzFeed News that the President’s daughter never ‘talked to anyone outside the Organization about the proposal [the Moscow tower], never visited the prospective project site and, even internally, was only minimally involved’.
The memo is part of an effort to have Cohen’s three-year prison sentence – which was due to begin on May 6 – reduced.
Cohen’s legal team say they have emails between Ivanka Trump and Russian contacts from after the January 31 date
Cohen’s legal team have also told senior House Democrats they have discovered a hard drive filled with millions of files including emails, voice recordings, images and other documents that ‘might be helpful to investigators’.
Cohen pleaded guilty last year to tax evasion, fraud, lying to Congress and campaign finance violations and received a three year jail term.
They have asked for more time and help from Congress to persuade the Southern District of New York to allow Cohen to postpone reporting to jail in order to review his files.
They stated that Cohen would not therefore be able to report to jail on May 6 as scheduled has as he won’t be able to finish reviewing the material.
Michael Cohen (leaning back to listen to his lawyer, Lanny Davis) pleaded guilty last year to tax evasion, fraud, lying to Congress and campaign finance violations and received a three year jail term
It added that ‘the substantial trove of new information, documents, recordings, and other evidence he can provide requires substantial time with him and ready access to him by congressional committees and staff to complete their investigations and to fulfill their oversight responsibilities.’
If any lawmakers were to write such a letter to officials, it could be useful if Cohen petitioned the court to delay his prison report date.
‘Working alone, Mr. Cohen has only had the time to go through less than 1 percent of the drive, or approximately 3,500 files,’ Cohen’s attorneys wrote.
‘Mr. Cohen needs time, resources, and assistance to separate out privileged and personal documents from these 14 million files to make the rest available for review by various congressional committees.’
Cohen has already received one short delay on medical grounds while he recovered from shoulder surgery.
He was originally scheduled to report to prison in early March, but that date was pushed back two months as he prepared for his congressional testimony.
Cohen told Congress in February how Trump ordered him to figure out how to pay Stormy Daniels $130,000 in hush money
It’s not clear which committees received letters from Cohen, or what they plan to do in response.
Cohen’s lawyers said they were still hopeful that federal prosecutors in New York agree to reopen his case and advocate for a lighter sentence. He has been sentenced to a three-year term.
‘It is our hope that the authorities in the Southern District of New York will consider this total picture of cooperation by Mr. Cohen and the particular facts involved here to grant Mr. Cohen a reduced term following the rules and procedures of the Southern District of New York.’
New York prosecutors previously advocated for a tough sentence, saying the crimes were serious and that the help Cohen had provided to ongoing investigations wasn’t as valuable or as complete as Cohen had claimed.
Cohen testified on Capitol Hill earlier this year and accused President Donald Trump of financial fraud. He also accused him of sanctioning hush-money payments to women who claimed they had affairs with him.
Republicans accused Cohen of lying when he appeared before Congress, including statements that he never requested a pardon from Trump and that he did not want a job in the White House.
In a six-page letter, Ohio Rep Representative Jim Jordan and North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows wrote to Attorney General William Barr that Cohen ‘committed perjury and knowingly made false statements during his testimony.’
Most of the Republican committee members on Wednesday railed against the Democratic majority for calling as a witness a man who pleaded guilty to lying to Congress once already.
In Thursday’s letter, Jordan and Meadows asserted that ‘[s]everal times during his testimony, Mr. Cohen denied committing various fraudulent acts that he has pleaded guilty to in federal court.’
Cohen’s contention that ‘I never defrauded any bank’ raised a red flag. One of his guilty pleas was to a charge of making false statements to a banking institution, which prosecutors referred to as ‘bank fraud’ in his plea agreement.