Michael Cohen reportedly pursued Moscow Trump Tower deep into campaign, asked Qatar for $1 million

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last updated 17 May 2018

"I'm not going to just roll over," Michael Cohen has told friends as he fumes and despairs over the barrage of unflattering headlines about him and his legal woes, Vanity Fair reports. He also confides: "I just can't take this anymore." Wednesday evening brought a slew of new revelations, including reports that two suspicious bank activity reports on Cohen are mysteriously missing, he worked to get a Trump Tower in Moscow built far later than previously disclosed, the FBI is investigating his payments from a South Korean state-owned aerospace firm, and he solicited what appears to be a $1 million bribe from Qatar.

Cohen told Congress last summer that he had given up on the Moscow Trump Tower project in January 2016. But congressional investigators and Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team have obtained text messages and emails showing that Cohen actively pursued the project as late as May 2016, as then-candidate Donald Trump clinched the Republican nomination, Yahoo News reports.

The texts and emails were provided by Felix Sater, a Russian-born developer and longtime Cohen friend who was partnering on the Trump Tower project. Sater encouraged Cohen to network with Russian officials at a conference in St. Petersburg in mid-June 2016 and wrangled him an invitation, Yahoo says, and Cohen considered going but decided he couldn't travel to Russia until after the Republican convention in July.

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Separately, The Washington Post and The Intercept report that Cohen solicited at least $1 million from Qatar for access to Trump and help with U.S. government projects on the sidelines of a Dec. 12, 2016, meeting at Trump Tower. Cohen first asked for the payment a few days earlier when he met Qatari investment fund executive Ahmed al-Rumaihi at a hotel, Rumaihi told The Washington Post on Wednesday. "He just threw it out there" as a cost of "doing business," he said, and after he refused, Cohen asked again as the two men waited outside a Trump Tower meeting.

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.