MICHAEL COHEN/ROBERT MUELLER/RUSSIA INVESTIGATION/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT/TRUMP BUSINESS: “President Trump woke up in balmy Buenos Aires early Friday [11-30-18], but his mind was back in Washington as he defended his decision to continue pursuing business deals as he ran for president in 2016, including looking ‘lightly’ at constructing a building in Russia. The president’s Twitter defense came a day after his former lawyer Michael D. Cohen admitted in court that he had lied to Congress about the extent of the Trump Organization’s pursuit of an agreement to build a tower in Moscow. Mr. Cohen said that, to help Mr. Trump politically, he had falsely testified that the Russia efforts had been dropped by January 2016, when they had in fact continued until June. By that point, Mr. Trump had clinched the Republican presidential nomination. The tweets echoed what one of Mr. Trump’s personal lawyers, Rudolph W. Giuliani, said a day earlier about the prospective Russia deal. Mr. Giuliani said that Mr. Trump’s written answers to questions posed by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, were consistent with what Mr. Cohen said in court on Thursday [11-29-18].”
–Eileen Sullivan, “Trump Defends Pursuit of Russia Deal in 2016 as ‘Very Legal’,” The New York Times online, November 30, 2018