Jill Abramson - The Mueller investigation is closing in on Trump
The rogues’ gallery
exposed in Robert Mueller’s court filings last week make the Watergate burglars
look positively classy. Even veteran lawyers
who were involved in the investigations of Richard Nixon say they’ve never seen
this level of chicanery. Most importantly, last week’s events showed that
Special Counsel Mueller is getting closer to exposing the scope and depth of it
all. His most recent filings make clear that considerable evidence touches the
president himself.
The disclosures from
Michael Cohen, the former Trump fixer who is now a cooperating witness,
drew
the connection tighter. In his guilty plea to an additional charge of lying
to Congress, Cohen revealed, and Trump confirmed, that the Trump Organization
was pursuing a luxury skyscraper deal in Moscow while Donald Trump, identified
as “Individual 1” in the latest court filings, was sewing up the Republican
party presidential nomination.
As a candidate, Trump
repeatedly reassured voters that he had no business dealings in Russia. But as
he uttered those lies, he knew Cohen was planning to sell Russian kleptocrats
$250m units in a future Trump Tower Moscow by luring Putin into the project
with a free $50m spread. This was all unfolding as emails from Democratic
officials, hacked by the Russians, disrupted the Democratic convention and the
Republican party was making its party platform much kinder to Russia.
Trump tried to dismiss
this Moscow real estate bombshell, saying it was fine for him to pursue his
business affairs while running for president, because if he lost, he expected
to return to the throne of the Trump Organization. Could this help Mueller
close the circle of collusion between Trump and Russia?.. read more:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/dec/03/trump-mueller-investigation-manafort-cohen