Trump now a subject of Mueller probe

Forget Paul Manafort and his "double-agent" misbehavior that led to Robert Mueller's going back to court to dissolve his plea agreement.    The spotlight has been grabbed by the surprise appearance in court Friday by former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, who pled guilty in federal court to having lied to Congress by telling them that the Trump Foundation was not pursuing plans beyond January 2016 to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.

Cohen now says that there were very active attempts up into June 2016 to acquire land.  In fact, during the campaign itself, Trump had signed a non-binding letter of intent, allowing Cohen to negotiate licensing for the Moscow project;  and they already had an agreement from a Russian oligarch to finance the project.    Cohen further states that he lied about this in order not to contradict statements that had been made by President-elect Trump that he had "nothing to do with Russia."

This thrusts Trump into the midst of a criminal investigation "as a major subject of interest," according to the Washington Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Josh Dawsey.  In fact, in court filings, Trump is referred to as "Individual 1."  They write:

"New evidence from two separate fronts of [Mueller's] investigation casts fresh doubts on Trump's version of key events involving Russia, signaling potential political and legal peril for the president.   Investigators have now publicly cast Trump as a central figure of their probe into whether Trump's campaign conspired with the Russian government during the 2016 campaign.

"Together, the documents show investigators have evidence that Trump was in close contact with his lieutenants as they made outreach to both Russia and WikiLeaks -- and that they tried to conceal the extent of their activities. . . . 

"Alan Dershowitz, a Trump ally and constitutional lawyer, said Cohen’s confessions don’t suggest Trump committed any crime but could suggest that Trump wasn’t telling the public the whole truth about the Moscow deal.  'This is politically damaging, but I’m not sure how legally damaging it is,' Dershowitz said.  'This is all about questionable political behavior. It’s a good reason for people voting against Trump. But I don’t see a crime yet.'

"But Tim O’Brien, a Trump biographer and frequent critic, said the developments pose significant new challenges for the president. . . .  Some legal experts argued Mueller appears to be drawing a picture of a candidate who was beholden to the Kremlin. Emails released in the Cohen plea show Trump seeking a financial endorsement from the Russian government on a private project while Russian President Vladi­mir Putin was offering to say flattering things about Trump."

[And, it should be added here, that Putin was hoping to get sanctions lifted that the US had imposed on Russia and some of its oligarchs in response to the Crimean takeover and the invasion of Ukraine.    That's the potential quid quo pro.]

“It creates the potential for Trump to feel an obligation to pay back President Putin, or Russia in general that ... do not put the best interests of America forward,” [former federal prosecutor Glen Kopp] said. “You are creating a potential vulnerability for a future leader of America.” . . . 

"Legal experts said prosecutors were not likely to build a guilty plea — a brick in the overall case — on the word of one person. The prosecutors’ filings show they have corroborated and buttressed Cohen’s account with contemporaneous emails, and people familiar with the probe say they have also obtained corroborating testimony from other witnesses."

In separate reporting, there is a fairly reliably sourced report that, as Cohen and his Russian business associate Felix Sater were seeking assistance from Putin on this project, they floated the idea of giving Putin personally the entire penthouse apartment, valued at $50 million.   As Sater put it:  "If we put Putin in the penthouse, every oligarch in Russia will line up wanting to live in the same building as Putin."  Whether Trump himself was involved in those discussions has not been clarified.

Michelle Goldberg, writing in the New York Times, put it this way:  "We still don’t know for certain if Russia has used leverage over Trump. But there should no longer be any doubt that Russia has leverage over him."

Nothing important -- such as building a major hotel and getting Russian financing for it -- happens there without Putin's knowledge and approval.    Some of it is formal, as in required permits, and some of it is simply winks and nods.   There is no doubt that Putin knew everything about it -- and that he knows that Trump lied about it.

This in itself gives him leverage over Trump -- and it continues to give him leverage -- just as Acting FBI Director Sally Yates told presidential attorney Don McGahn the same about Michael Flynn.   It gives the Russians the potential to blackmail our top national security official . . . and the president.

But it's more than just that Trump lied to the American people about his business dealings in Russia -- and that Putin knows he lied and could use that against him.   There's probably much much more "kompromat" that they have on Trump involving Russian oligarchs purchasing real estate from Trump in the US as ways of laundering money for them.

So why did the building project suddenly end in mid-June 2016?    That's not entirely clear, yet, although there are striking contemporary happenings.   In pursuit of the Trump Tower project, Michael Cohen was scheduled to travel to Russia at their invitation -- until he suddenly cancelled the trip -- immediately after the DNC emails were hacked.    As one journalist speculated:    perhaps Team Trump decided there was much more to be gained from getting those released to embarrass Clinton -- and perhaps other help in getting Trump elecvted -- than in pursuing the Trump Tower in Moscow.  Stay tuned for further clarity.

So this development in the Mueller probe is huge.   And Trump himself is squarely in the center of it.    It's not just that he's been caught lying.   Here we have the Republican candidate for president, who inexplicably goes around insulting the leaders of our allies while praising Vladimir Putin, who at the same time is secretly pursuing a big financial deal with Russia that will obligate him to the Russians but also will reap financial benefits for him personally -- and who is lying to the American people about it . . . which gives Putin power over him.

If the deal had gone through, it would clearly have been a violation of the emoluments clause of the Constitution.   And some have even called it treason, or at least an impeachable offense.

Ralph