The office of US special investigator Robert Mueller has rejected a report on the grave allegation that US President Donald Trump has instigated his former lawyer Michael Cohen to perjury.
The presentation of „specific notices to the Special Investigator’s Office“ and „the description of documents and testimonies“ received by the Office regarding Cohen’s testimony before the Congress was „not correct,“ said the spokesman for the US Special Investigator. Mueller rarely speaks publicly.
The online portal „Buzzfeed“ had previously reported, citing two anonymous law enforcement officials, Cohen have according to his own account of his intentional false statements of 2017 on personal instructions of the President made. Cohen’s statements to the Intelligence Committees focused on the planned construction of a Trump Tower in Moscow. Trump rejected the accusation as a lie. Cohen „lies to reduce his term,“ countered Trump in the short message service Twitter.
Three years in prison for Trump’s close confidants
Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison in December, partly because of his false statements to Congress. The lawyer admitted to the investigators that he had made false statements to the committees about the Trump Group’s project of a high-rise tower with luxury apartments in Moscow. Contrary to his original statements, the project is said to have been prosecuted until June 2016 – that is, until Trump was almost certainly a Republican presidential candidate.
Cohen had testified to the committees that the Trump Tower project had already been buried in January 2016, before the start of the Republican primaries. The chronology is highly explosive in that it concerns whether Trump pursued business interests in Russia at an advanced stage of his election campaign – which in turn could have influenced his political stance towards Moscow. Trump has repeatedly denied „business“ in Russia.
The former lawyer of today’s president also admitted to the investigators that he had advised Trump more frequently about the Moscow project than he had originally led. Cohen worked for Trump for more than ten years and was considered one of his most important problem solvers and closest confidants. So he has a lot of insider knowledge about the business and personal circumstances of the president.
