MICHAEL COHEN/ROBERT MUELLER/RUSSIA/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT/TRUMP BUSINESS: “The latest criminal charges against Michael D. Cohen, President Trump’s longtime fixer, for lying about a Moscow hotel deal raised questions of whether Mr. Cohen created new legal risks for Mr. Trump or his family members, possibly by contradicting what they told investigators about the same project. The answer, at least according to the president’s lawyers and people close to his family, is no. Although Mr. Trump’s lawyers have long worried that the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, is trying to catch Mr. Trump in a lie, they said Mr. Cohen’s new account of the Trump Organization’s abortive hotel project in Moscow essentially matches what Mr. Trump himself stated in written answers delivered to prosecutors just nine days ago. Mr. Cohen might have lied to the authorities about aspects of the deal, as the complaint charges, they said, but the president did not…According to the new documents released by the special counsel, Mr. Cohen lied when he told Congress last year that he had talked to Mr. Trump about the project only three times and that the proposal died in January 2016 — before the first primary in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. He also concealed his interactions with Russian officials and the fact that he asked Mr. Trump to travel to Russia to promote the deal because, he said, he wanted to support Mr. Trump’s ‘political messaging.’”
–Maggie Haberman, Michael S. Schmidt and Sharon LaFraniere, “Trump’s Recall of Moscow Deal Matches Cohen’s, President’s Lawyers Say,” The New York Times online, November 29, 2018