Trump’s ex-lawyer Michael Cohen admits lying to Congress

A former lawyer for Donald Trump has admitted that he lied to Congress about a Russian property deal involving the US President during the 2016 election.

Michael Cohen admitted before a federal judge in Manhattan that negotiations to build a skyscraper in Moscow had continued until June 2016, while Trump was running for the White House – five months longer than Cohen had originally stated.

According to papers filed by special counsel Robert Muellers investigators, Cohen “made the false statements to (1) minimise links between the Moscow Project and [Trump] and (2) 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”.

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The BBC reports that Cohen lied to Congress “out of loyalty to Mr Trump”, while the US president has since accused his former lawyer of “lying to prosecutors in the hope of receiving a reduced sentence”.

“I made these misstatements to be consistent with individual 1’s political messaging and out of loyalty to individual 1,” Cohen said in court. He has previously identified “individual 1” to be Donald Trump.

Cohen has previously pleaded guilty to violating campaign funding laws during the 2016 election, when he disbursed hush money to several women who had claimed to have had affairs with Trump.

CNN reports that the deal to build a Trump tower in Moscow included an offer to gift a £39 million penthouse apartment in the building to Russian president Vladimir Putin.

Current Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani has dismissed the reports, denying that the US president had ever heard of it, and that the idea “never got anywhere beyond an unfunded letter of intent and never even a proposal or draft contract”.

However, the Washington Post reports that Cohen briefed Donald Trump on the project “on more than three occasions”, according to court filings.