Top Trump Executive Asked Kremlin Directly for Help on Stalled Moscow Deal

Trump Attorney Spoke With Candidate Trump Three Times About Moscow Project

In January 2016 when a deal for a “massive” Trump Tower in Moscow was falling apart Michael Cohen, a senior vice president with The Trump Organization emailed the Kremlin directly asking for help saving it – while his boss was campaigning to become the next president of the U.S.

Why Is This Important?
The Washington Post, which first reported on the email, calls it “the most direct interaction yet documented of a top Trump aide and a similarly senior member of Putin’s government,” and adds that it “shows the Trump business official directly seeking Kremlin assistance in advancing Trump’s business interests, in the same months when Trump was distinguishing himself on the campaign trail with his warm rhetoric about Putin.”

Cohen “emailed Vladi­mir Putin’s personal spokesman during the U.S. presidential campaign last year to ask for help advancing a stalled Trump Tower development project in Moscow, according to documents submitted to Congress Monday,” The Washington Post reports.

“Over the past few months I have been working with a company based in Russia regarding the development of a Trump Tower – Moscow project in Moscow City,” Cohen wrote, in an email to Dmitry Peskov. “Without getting into lengthy specifics the communication between our two sides has stalled.”

“As this project is too important, I am hereby requesting your assistance. I respectfully request someone, preferably you, contact me so that I might discuss the specifics as well as arranging meetings with the appropriate individuals. I thank you in advance for your assistance and look forward to hearing from you soon,” Cohen wrote.

Also Monday, Bloomberg News reports that “Donald Trump discussed a proposal to build a hotel and condominium tower in Moscow on three occasions with his company’s lawyer.”

The lawyer, Michael Cohen, said in a statement to a Congressional committee investigating Trump’s campaign ties to Russia, that the Trump Organization weighed the proposal from September 2015 to January 2016.

…

Cohen said he worked on the project with Felix Sater, a Russian-born developer who had previously worked with Trump on a hotel and condominium in Manhattan’s Soho neighborhood.

Referring to the DNC hacked emails that Wikileaks published, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes Monday made this observation:

Earlier Monday The Washington Post reported on the “massive” Trump Tower Moscow deal, and The New York Times reported on a Trump associate who told Cohen, “I will get Putin on this program and we will get Donald elected.”

Last summer, as the Trump campaign was flailing, Cohen became national news after this CNN interview:

UPDATE: ABC News reports Cohen confirmed Donald Trump personally signed a letter of intention to move forward with the Trump Tower Moscow project, four months after he had begun campaigning for president.

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