Trump Organization Exec Emailed Putin’s Spokesman for Help on a Deal
New reports raise further questions about Donald Trump’s businesses and Russia:
A top executive from Donald Trump’s real estate company emailed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s personal spokesman during the U.S. presidential campaign last year to ask for help advancing a stalled Trump Tower development project in Moscow, according to documents submitted to Congress on Monday.
The request came in a mid-January 2016 email from Michael Cohen, one of Trump’s closest business advisers, who asked longtime Putin lieutenant Dmitry Peskov for assistance in reviving a deal that Cohen suggested was languishing.
. . . .
Cohen’s email to Peskov provides an example of a Trump business official directly seeking Kremlin assistance in advancing Trump’s business interests.
The project appears to have gone nowhere. It does not look like evidence of “collusion” between Trump and Putin. It just causes any reasonable person to wonder whether the prospect of financial gain played or plays any part in Trump’s unrelenting praise for Vladimir Putin, a ruthless Soviet-style dictator who imprisons, tortures, and kills his political opponents.
I recently read Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man’s Fight for Justice. It’s a compelling read about the imprisonment, torture, and murder of Sergei Magnitsky, whose death led to the U.S. passage of the Magnitsky Act to retaliate against those involved. (That’s the same law that a Kremlin-connected lawyer talked to Manafort and Jr. about getting repealed. Repeal of the Magnitsky Act is one of Putin’s top priorities.) I’ll have a review when I get a chance. In the meantime, watch the first 20 minutes of this. (Keep watching if you’re hooked.)
This is what we’re dealing with in Putin. It’s no joke. The fact that we have a President who praises this man is a continual source of astonishment to me.
[Cross-posted at The Jury Talks Back.]