After telling media in October 2017 that “he received [Cohen’s January 2016] email but did not reply … [and does] not remember any discussions about Cohen attending the St. Petersburg economic forum,” Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov will, in November 2018—once Cohen has pled guilty to federal crimes and admitted the truth of his contacts with the Kremlin—reveal that his office at the Kremlin “told [Cohen and the Trump Organization] that … if they want to invest in Russia we will be happy to see them at [the] St. Petersburg [International] Economic Forum” in mid-June 2016, an invite-only event.226
November 2018 is also the month that the Department of Justice announces that “Russian trolls are interfering online with the [2018] midterm” elections, further undercutting Trump’s statement from a few months earlier—made while standing beside Putin himself in Helsinki, Finland—that “I don’t see why it would be Russia” interfering in U.S. elections. It is a statement Trump will try to walk back shortly thereafter, following significant outcry in U.S. media, by contending that what he meant to say was, “I don’t see why it wouldn’t be Russia.”227 A Senate report published before the 2018 midterms will declare that, prior to those elections, “Kremlin-linked trolls consistently push[ed] narratives supportive of President Donald Trump and critical of impeachment talk.”228
When the Mueller Report on Russian election interference and allegations of obstruction of justice against Trump is released to the public, with redactions, in April 2019, Americans will learn much more about Cohen’s 2015 and 2016 efforts to help Trump build a Trump-branded tower in Moscow. The report will reveal not only that Cohen did “provide updates directly to Trump throughout 2015 and 2016” but that their conversations about the project “were not off-hand … because the project had the potential to be so lucrative.”229 It will also reveal that, according to Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, discussions between Trump, Cohen, and the Kremlin about a Trump Tower Moscow “went on throughout 2016 … the president can remember having conversations with him [Cohen] about it.… The president also remembers … could be [the conversations went] up to as far as October, November [2016].”230 At another point in the report Giuliani is quoted as saying that, according to what Trump told him, discussions of Trump Tower Moscow were “going on from the day I announced [in June 2015] to the day I won [in November 2016].”231 On November 29, 2018, when pressed on whether it was appropriate for him to be negotiating a business deal with the Kremlin while running for president on a pro-Russia foreign policy and claiming to have no involvement with Russia at all, Trump tells members of the media, “It doesn’t matter because I was allowed to do whatever I wanted during the campaign.”232
It is consistent with this mantra—one Trump only reveals post-election—that on November 2, 2015, the candidate secretly signs a letter of intent to build a Trump Tower Moscow that he believes will require Kremlin approval, even though he is in the midst of a presidential campaign in which the formulation of and basis for his foreign policy, particularly with respect to Russia, has already become a topic of public discussion.
Within ten days of Trump signing the letter of intent with prospective Russian business partner Andrey Rozov, Ivanka Trump receives an email from Lana Erchova, the wife of the Russian energy minister’s former press secretary, Dmitry Klokov.233 At the time Ivanka receives the email, Klokov is working for the Russian government as director of external communications for the state-owned “Federal Grid Company of Unified Energy System [sic].”234 Klokov offers his “assistance” to the Trump campaign through his wife’s email to Ivanka, who forwards the email to Cohen, who thereafter has multiple contacts with Klokov about helping the Trump campaign achieve “synergy on a government level” with the Russian Federation through a meeting in Russia between Trump and Putin.235 Rather than rebuffing the offer of a face-to-face meeting with the Russian president for then-candidate Trump, Cohen discusses with Klokov his desire to do “site surveys” for the Trump Tower Moscow project and to speak to “local developers” in Moscow, adding that he would like to meet with Klokov on Trump’s behalf, or have Trump himself travel to Moscow as part of an “official” visit (a visit pursuant to a formal invitation from the Kremlin).236 Klokov’s insistence that the visit “has to be informal” suggests that he understands that what Trump’s attorney is suggesting is both politically and diplomatically