Despite the president’s best efforts to make the opposite situation be the case, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and possible Trump team connections to that interference is continuing.
After already having brought charges against four former Trump associates, Mueller is now said to be seeking information on incidents involving Trump’s longtime personal lawyer Michael Cohen. Cohen has been in the news recently for having admitted to facilitating a payment of $130,000 in hush money to an adult film star known as Stormy Daniels, but that’s not what Mueller is interested in.
According to The Washington Post, Mueller has “requested documents and interviewed witnesses” about incidents including the pre-election negotiations over a potential Trump Tower in Moscow.
Although the tower has never been built, in October 2015, it was Cohen who delivered the eventual president a letter of intent from a Russian developer bent on seeing the Trump name on a building in the Russian capital. Additionally, although Cohen reportedly claims to “not recall” having successfully made contact, he eventually even sent an email to Dmitry Peskov, spokesperson for Russian president Vladimir Putin, in an effort to get Putin’s help in moving the project forward.
In addition to that, Cohen reportedly received a proposal for peace in the Ukraine that favored Russian interests in January of 2017, shortly after his longtime boss was inaugurated as president. He received that proposal from Ukrainian lawmaker Andrii V. Artemenko, who met with Cohen and Trump business associate Felix Sater at a meeting set up by the latter man on January 27, 2017, in New York City.
Accounts of the outcome of that meeting differ among the attendees. Artemenko reportedly claims that he received word that Cohen had gotten his peace proposal to the president’s then-national security adviser, Michael Flynn, while Cohen claims that such is false. Concurrently, Cohen claims that Artemenko developed his plan in consultation with Russian officials, but the Ukrainian politician denies that claim, as does the Russian government.
Cohen is, of course, hardly the only current or former Trump associate to face reported scrutiny over ties to Russia. Michael Flynn himself was forced out of the job after it came out that he had lied about the content of communications with the now former Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergei Kislyak. Although he claimed otherwise, not long before Cohen met with Artemenko, Flynn had told the Russian ambassador that the Trump administration intended to lift sanctions imposed by President Obama in response to Russian election meddling.
Flynn has since pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI and agreed to cooperate with federal investigators.
Others to face scrutiny for ties to Russian interests include everyone from Donald Trump Jr. to Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The Russia scandal reached yet another critical point when it came out that Trump Jr. had met with an allegedly Kremlin connected lawyer for the purpose of getting dirt on Hillary Clinton.
Besides these issues, former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort has faced charges for maintaining a money laundering scheme in connection to work for Russia-aligned interests in the Ukraine.
Those charges topped off longstanding concern about the Trump campaign’s efforts to bend its foreign policy stances to Russian wishes, including in the case of a portion of the 2016 GOP platform that was softened on the issue of Russian aggression in the Ukraine.
Featured Image via Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call
