Report: Michael Cohen says Trump knew about 2016 Trump Tower meeting in advance
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President Trump's former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, claims that Trump knew in advance of the June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower between Donald Trump Jr. and Russians who promised to deliver damaging information on Hillary Clinton, people with knowledge of the situation told CNN.
They also told CNN Cohen is willing to share this information with Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Cohen says he was one of several people with Trump when Trump Jr. informed him of the offer, and Trump said he should go ahead with the meeting. Since news of the meeting broke in the summer of 2017, Trump has denied ever knowing about the meeting in advance. Trump Jr. set up the meeting with a publicist he knew, and it was attended by several Russians, including Kremlin-connected lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, and Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort.
Cohen does not have recordings of the moment when Trump learned about the meeting, CNN reports. Trump's attorney, Rudy Giuliani, told CNN that Cohen is "certainly a source that is not credible."
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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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