daughter Ivanka—Trump tells the special counsel that he “do[es] not recall being told during the campaign of efforts by Russian officials to meet with me or with senior members of my campaign.”56 At least one of these individuals, Cohen, has made public statements, as well as statements to the special counsel, contradicting Trump’s account, while others have offered accounts of varying improbability about having kept all their pre-election contacts with Russian nationals from the GOP presidential candidate.
Trump’s inability to recall any information of substance about his conversations with key advisers during the presidential campaign mirrors his son’s inability to recall many of his own conversations during the campaign. In his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Trump Jr. told the senators he “couldn’t remember” or “didn’t know” the answer to a question 186 times.57
Apropos of this litany of accounts of Trump being kept in the dark by members of his inner circle, the Mueller Report details the president’s habit of communicating the fact that he is “pleased” with a Russia-probe witness’s public statements or testimony either directly, through counsel, or on social media; in the narrative of events outlined by the report, both Michael Cohen and Jared Kushner receive such a message from the president.58 In the case of Cohen’s congressional testimony, the report further details how Trump’s personal counsel ensured that additional “communications with Russia and more communications with candidate Trump” would be elided from Cohen’s sworn statement.59 According to Cohen, Trump’s attorney told him to “stay on message and not contradict the president” by “keeping Trump out of the narrative,” and that Cohen listing in his statement all his contacts with Russia on Trump’s behalf—as requested by Congress—would unacceptably “muddy the water.”60 Cohen told Mueller that he consequently lied to Congress, a federal felony, because “it was what he was expected to do” by Trump and his legal team.61 Moreover, Cohen’s joint defense agreement with Trump’s legal team allowed the team to unilaterally remove from Cohen’s draft of his statement sentences such as “The [Trump Tower Moscow] building project led me to make limited contacts with Russian government officials,” even as sentences that were manifestly untrue—such as Cohen’s claim he could “not recall any response to any email to [Putin lieutenant Dmitry Peskov], nor any other contacts by me with Mr. Peskov or other Russian government officials”—were left untouched by Trump’s lawyers.62 This conduct mirrors Trump’s removal of potentially inculpatory evidence from his son Don’s statement about his June 9, 2016, meeting with Kremlin agents in Trump Tower. In that instance, candidate Trump personally “delet[ed] a line [in the statement] that acknowledged that the [June 9] meeting was with ‘an individual who [Trump Jr.] was told might have information helpful to the campaign.’”63
Among the Trump team’s interferences with Cohen’s congressional testimony, perhaps most startling was its insistence that Cohen not reveal to Congress that Trump “told Cohen to reach out to Putin’s office” about “a meeting between Trump and Putin in New York during the 2015 United Nations General Assembly,” as well asking him to hide the additional fact that, after his 2015 directive to Cohen to connect him with Putin, Trump “asked him multiple times for updates on the proposed meeting.”64 The private meeting Trump sought with Putin would have occurred while Trump was being aided by a Kremlin intermediary, Felix Sater, in negotiations to build a tower in Moscow that could net Trump—whose total net worth in 2015 was $4.5 billion, per Forbes—more than $1 billion in revenue. The idea of effectuating such a deal during a presidential election was so unprecedented and deeply problematic that Putin’s office had to scold Trump through his attorney, telling Cohen that “it would not follow proper protocol for Putin to meet with Trump.”65 Putin would instead meet with Trump’s top national security advisor, Michael Flynn, in Moscow ninety days later.
According to Cohen, Trump was also responsible for his removing from his congressional testimony a May 2016 discussion he had with Trump about whether Trump would travel to Russia during the presidential campaign to complete negotiations over his $1 billion Russian tower, a trip Trump told Cohen he would take—regardless, apparently, of any effect on his presidential campaign—if the tower deal was “lock[ed] and load[ed]” for him by Cohen. “Cohen recalled discussing the invitation to the St. Petersburg economic forum with candidate Trump and saying that Putin or Russian prime minister Dmitry Medvedev might be there,” according to the report.66
As recounted by the special counsel’s office, throughout Cohen’s interactions with