Just a few minutes ago on Fox News, Catherine Herridge broke down the substance of Cohen’s misstatements to Congress that are the subject of his guilty plea this morning in federal court.
Watch below:
Essentially what she explains is that Cohen lied about the duration of the discussions about this Moscow real estate project (it went until June 2016) and how extensive the discussions were about certain individuals traveling to Moscow (Trump flying to Moscow, which he didn’t).
Herridge also reads this from Cohen’s statement to the court which states:
The Trump Tower Moscow proposal was not related in any way to Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign. Moreover, the proposal had nothing to do with alleged collusion with Russia regarding the US presidential election. Both I and the Trump organization were evaluating this proposal and many others from solely a business standpoint and rejected going forward on that basis.
Herridge further notes that she spoke with someone close to the Trump legal team and they said this about these new charges against Cohen:
How is a change in the timing and any discussion of travel material to a crime of collusion? Because the one fact that has been a constant here between the statement to Congress and now a statement to the court this morning is that the deal fell through. It never went through. So how is the change in the timing as well as the conversations material to a crime in this particular case?
I think that’s a good point. But what others would no doubt argue is that Mueller is hoping that because of this plea agreement, Cohen can give him something else more material to the Russia probe.
When you look at all of this, it seems to me that Mueller has nothing on Trump and isn’t ready to stop his fishing expedition in hopes of haranguing Trump in the future.