Trump Jr.'s 2017 Testimony Conflicts With Cohen's Account Of Russian Talks

Source: NPR | November 30, 2018 | Philip Ewing

Donald Trump Jr.’s testimony to Congress about his family’s real estate negotiations with powerful Russians does not comport with the new version laid out by Donald Trump’s ex-attorney Michael Cohen, official transcripts show.

Trump Jr. told the Senate Judiciary Committee in September 2017 that although there had been negotiations surrounding a prospective Trump Tower in Moscow, they concluded without result “at the end” of 2014.

“But not in 2015 or 2016?” Trump Jr. was asked.

“Certainly not ’16,” he said. “There was never a definitive end to it. It just died of deal fatigue.”

The questions and Trump Jr.’s answers do allude to a number of other prospective projects; he also was asked by Senate investigators about news reports about a Trump Tower Moscow negotiation that took place in 2015 and 2016, which he acknowledged but did not detail.

The accounts by Trump Jr. contrast with a new version of events given by Cohen on Thursday in a guilty plea in federal court. In that new version, Cohen says the discussions with at least one Russian government official and others in Moscow continued through June 2016, well into Trump’s presidential campaign.

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Trump Jr. told the Senate committee last year that he was “peripherally aware” of those discussions but that he didn’t know that Cohen had sent an email to the Putin aide, Dmitry Peskov.

Cohen said in his guilty plea that he had briefed Trump’s family members about his talks, although the court documents don’t specify who.

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The shift in understanding of the events of 2016 provided by Cohen is important for a few reasons:

First, it called into question the Trump family’s denials about having business dealings with Russians. Second, it confirmed the Trumps had a channel open with powerful Russians at the same time the Russian government was waging a widespread campaign of “active measures” against the United States.

And third, it put the Russian government and others in Moscow in the position of being able to know, confidentially, the truth about the Trump family’s denials about negotiations over the Moscow real estate deals.

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Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, said he has made referrals to the office of Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller because he said he believed people hadn’t given his committee the truth.

He declined to identify who might be involved or how often he has referred cases to Mueller, but Burr did allude to Cohen’s plea as an example of what he called the consequences that could be involved.

“One instance just highlighted of late is that the special prosecutor made an indictment yesterday using the transcripts of interviews we have done in our committee to indict somebody for lying to Congress,” Burr said on Friday.

“It’s a loud message to everybody that is interviewed by our committee. … If you lie to us we’re going to go after you.”

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