Cohen submits more documents

Attorneys for Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s former fixer, submitted documents to lawmakers Thursday night accusing Trump and his team of lawyers of instructing Cohen to lie to Congress about when negotiations ended to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.

  Buzzfeed

Okay, we knew that already. Any proof?

Surely Mueller had these.

The [12-page] memo addresses issues that have been at the center of the recently concluded two-year investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller into possible coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with Trump’s campaign.

[...]

The more than 100 pages of documents included with Cohen’s memo claim to lay bare a “conspiracy to collude” with the Russian government during the campaign, along with an array of other crimes by the president. The memo also for the "first time discloses Michael Cohen’s testimony to the Mueller team and to other non-public testimony to congressional committees," according to Cohen's legal team.

Cohen’s memo supports BuzzFeed News' earlier reporting that Cohen told investigators Trump had directed him to lie about the timing of real estate negotiations in Moscow.

For which Buzzfeed took a hard hit when Mueller's spokesperson said their article was inaccurate, without specifying how.

Peter Carr, the special counsel’s former spokesperson, declined to comment on [the memo and documents] Thursday night.

[...]

“Cohen explained that he was, in effect, instructed to lie about the January 31, 2016 date through the use of Trump code words that could only be interpreted as an instruction or ‘directive,’” the memo states, "to cover-up the fact that Cohen had been in contact with Russians during most of the presidential campaign, from the day of the Iowa caucuses, February 1, through all the primaries and caucuses and until June 2016, after Trump had become the putative Republican nominee by assembling a majority of delegates.”

The memo, which details some of what Cohen told the House and Senate intelligence committees behind closed doors in February, further states that after delivering his false testimony, Cohen received a call “from Trump’s attorney, who congratulated him on the testimony — and said his ‘client’ was happy with Cohen’s testimony.”

[...]

The memo implicates Ivanka Trump in the negotiations, stating that she knew Cohen gave false testimony to Congress. According to the memo, he told the intelligence committees that in late 2015 the president’s daughter forwarded him “an email from the wife of a former Russian weight-lifting champion about Ivanka sponsoring a health spa at the top of the Moscow Trump Tower.” BuzzFeed News first reported that in November 2015, Ivanka Trump put Cohen in touch with the weightlifter, a Russian Olympian named Dmitry Klokov who offered to introduce Trump to Russian President Vladimir Putin to facilitate the Moscow tower project.

Peter Mirijanian, a spokesperson for Ivanka Trump, did not immediately respond to calls for comment. He previously told BuzzFeed News, “Ms. Trump did not know about this proposal until after a non-binding letter of intent had been signed, never talked to anyone outside the Organization about the proposal, never visited the prospective project site and, even internally, was only minimally involved.”

I'm not seeing anything new in all this.

The memo is part of an effort by Cohen to reduce and delay the three-year prison term he was sentenced to serve, which is scheduled to begin on May 6. Highlighting evidence he provided to congressional committees in February, a letter that accompanied the memo states that Cohen “was only recently able to access a hard drive with important documents,” and that the “drive contains over 14 million files, which consist of all e-mails, voice recordings, images, and attachments from Mr. Cohen’s computers and phones.” Lanny Davis, one of Cohen’s attorneys, told BuzzFeed News that Cohen had no access to the hard drive when he testified before Congress earlier this year because it had been seized by prosecutors and was returned to him only last week.

[...]

Cohen’s attorneys sent the letter to the heads of the House Intelligence, Judiciary, Financial Services, and Oversight committees, who are Democrats.

I didn't read the whole document and it's attachments, but I you can, if you like:

Memorandum to the File by Lanny J. Davis, et al.

(Somebody is called Stewie Rah-Rah.  Sound like a mobster?  He's listed as a billionaire art collector.)

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.