Trump was just confronted over Michael Cohen’s new plea and responded with guilty conscience

Despite President Trump’s constant, desperate Twitter outbursts insisting that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation is a “witch hunt,” the Russia probe continues to pay dividends for the American people. Numerous indictments and convictions have already proven the validity of Mueller’s work and a new major development today indicates there could be even more serious revelations just over the horizon.

CNN reports that Michael Cohen, the former longtime attorney and fixer for Trump, has struck a new plea deal with Mueller and admitted to lying to Congress about the Trump Tower Moscow deal.

Cohen previously claimed that the Russian development negotiations ended in 2016 before the Iowa caucuses had even occurred. He also insisted that he hadn’t spoken to other companies about the plans and that the Russian government wasn’t involved. Now, he’s admitted that he was lying on all counts.

In reality, the conversations around the deal extended into June 2016, the negotiations were discussed with Trump and his family more frequently and deeply than he previously claimed, and the deal was also discussed with a Russian government official.

“Cohen made the false statements to … give the false impression that the Moscow Project ended before ‘the Iowa caucus and….the very first primary,’ in hopes of limiting the ongoing Russia investigations,” reads the court filing from Mueller’s office.

Read the full plea deal here.

Trump has already responded to the Cohen story and, as usual, has chosen to attack rather than explain himself. He called his former attorney a “weak person and not a very smart person” and alleged that Cohen is cynically trying to lessen his prison sentence by fabricating his story.

Then, because it’s Trump and he simply can’t help himself, he tipped his hand by saying that even if Cohen’s story is true it doesn’t matter. He came across looking exceedingly guilty, and it doesn’t seem beyond the realm of possibility that he will soon admit to everything Cohen alleges but simply claim there’s nothing wrong with what he did. Today was the test balloon. 

“I was allowed to do whatever I wanted during the campaign. I was running my business, a lot of different things during the campaign,” Trump claimed.

Of course, Trump has lied repeatedly about his business entanglements and contrary to what he says, they should be a very big point of concern for the American people. If we don’t know who our president is and was beholden to financially, we won’t be able to stop him from exploiting his vast powers to enrich himself and his family.

It’s worth noting that Hillary Clinton correctly called out Trump for his involvement with Russia during the campaign. At the time, he said he had no business or deals with Russia. Now that we know he was blatantly lying it’s clear that something very sinister was going on. If there really was nothing unsavory about his Russian businesses there would have been no need to lie. Hopefully, Mueller provides us with the full story sooner rather than later.

Natalie Dickinson

Natalie is a staff writer for the Washington Press. She graduated from Oberlin College in 2010 and has been freelance blogging and writing for progressive outlets ever since.