The Washington Post this afternoon revealed that President Donald Trump’s longtime attorney Michael Cohen contacted Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman in January 2016 to ask for help with a potential Moscow project.
The Post Post reported, citing documents submitted to Congress, that Cohen emailed Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov to ask for “assistance” with a Trump Tower development project in Moscow that was never completed.
“Without getting into lengthy specifics. the communication between our two sides has stalled,” Cohen, formerly executive vice president of the Trump Organization, wrote to Peskov, according to the report.
Cohen said he was “working with a company based in Russia regarding the development of a Trump Tower – Moscow project in Moscow City” and said the project was “too important,” according to the Washington Post.
“I am hereby requesting your assistance. I respectfully request someone, preferably you, contact me so that I might discuss the specifics as well as arranging meetings with the appropriate individuals,” he wrote, according to the report. “I thank you in advance for your assistance and look forward to hearing from you soon.”
Cohen submitted a statement along with the documents, according to the Washington Post, in which he told Congressional investigators that he reached out to Peskov at Felix Sater’s recommendation.
Sater, is a felon and Trump’s former business partner. He has known Cohen dating back to his teenage years and often shopped Trump’s name to developers, though Cohen reportedly was “a lead negotiator” on the Trump Tower project.
The New York Times reported Monday that Sater boasted about his links to Putin and predicted the Russian leader would help ensure Trump’s election.
“Our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it,” Sater wrote to Cohen in 2015, according to the report. “I will get all of Putin’s team to buy in on this, I will manage this process.”