Supervisor Elham AbolFateh
Editor in Chief Mohamed Wadie

Trump, Ex-Lawyer Trade Accusations, BuzzFeed Report Continues to Fuel Uproar


Sat 19 Jan 2019 | 02:23 PM
Yassmine Elsayed

By: Yassmine ElSayed

CAIRO, Jan. 19 (SEE) - An uproar is widespread in the US after a recent report published by BuzzFeed claimed that President Donald Trump asked his former personal lawyer Michael Cohen to lie before a congressional investigation about talks regarding a possible Trump Tower project in Moscow.

According to media reports, the BuzzFeed’s story, which was published Thursday night, did not rely on Cohen's claims, but rather cited two federal law enforcement officials involved in the investigation. It also cites "multiple witnesses from the Trump Organization and internal company emails, text messages, and a cache of other documents" related to Trump's reported directive that were found by special counsel Robert Mueller's team of investigators.

Cohen

Confronted with such evidence, Cohen acknowledged that he received the instructions from Trump during his interviews with the special counsel's office, BuzzFeed said.

However, a spokesman for special counsel Robert Mueller disputed elements of the report in a statement to CNBC. "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," Peter Carr said in a statement to CNBC.

Meanwhile, Rudy Giuliani, who represents Trump in the Mueller probe, told The Washington Post: "If you believe Cohen, I can get you a great deal on the Brooklyn Bridge." He made a similar remark to NBC News.

Later on Friday, Giuliani said in a statement that "any suggestion – from any source – that the President counseled Michael Cohen to lie is categorically false."

"Today's claims are just more made-up lies born of Michael Cohen's malice and desperation, in an effort to reduce his sentence," Giuliani added.

On his part, President Trump tweeted and accused his former lawyer Michael Cohen of "lying to reduce his jail time".

And in a telephone interview on a Fox News program on Saturday, Trump slammed Cohen as a "rat" and said he "should give information maybe on his father-in-law, because that's the one that people want to look at."

Cohen's father-in-law, Fima Shusterman, reportedly loaned at least $20 million to a Chicago taxicab mogul whose name appeared in documents related to FBI raids on Cohen's home, office and hotel room in April.

Mueller, a former FBI director under President George W. Bush, is investigating Russia's attack on the 2016 election and potential coordination between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign. Trump has repeatedly denied collusion and obstructing justice, while labeling the Mueller probe a "witch hunt."

Cohen talked to Senate and House investigators in October 2017 about the Moscow real estate negotiations.

Cohen, who once said he would take a bullet for Trump, pleaded guilty in November to lying to Congress about the Trump Tower Moscow project, which never came to fruition. Prosecutors said Cohen gave congressional investigators the false impression that talks about the possible tower ended in January 2016, just as the presidential primary season was kicking off. Cohen later admitted he had actually talked about it as late as June 2016.

Cohen has cooperated extensively with Mueller, according to court filings.

In August, Cohen had pleaded guilty to several charges in a case brought by federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York. He said Trump had directed him to commit campaign finance violations by coordinating payoffs to two women who had said they had sexual interactions with Trump more than a decade before he ran for president.

The White House has denied the president engaged in the purported trysts.

In December, Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison, and is due to begin his term in March. Trump has called Cohen a "weak person" and a "rat."

Cohen is scheduled to testify publicly before the House Oversight Committee on Feb. 7.