Tag: Trump Tower Moscow

Businessman involved in Trump Tower Moscow discussions to appear before Intelligence Committee staff

Washington Post logoThe House Intelligence Committee is expected to hear Tuesday from a businessman who worked with the Trump Organization on a couple of projects, including briefly discussing building a Trump tower in Moscow.

Giorgi Rtskhiladze, a native of Georgia who is a U.S. citizen, expects to be quizzed Tuesday by the committee’s staff about his brief role in the Trump Moscow development discussions and about a more provocative topic: a text message he sent to Michael Cohen shortly before the 2016 election that was cited in the recent report by Robert S. Mueller III.

The text sent by Rtskhiladze in October 2016 said he had “stopped the flow of tapes from Russia,” presumably a reference to reports of videotapes that might be embarrassing to then-candidate Donald Trump.

View the complete June 24 article by Tom Hamburger on The Washington Post website here.

Cohen says Trump attorney told him to say Trump Tower talks ended earlier than they did

The House Intelligence Committee has released transcripts of its private interviews with Michael Cohen, revealing that he told lawmakers President Trump‘s attorney Jay Sekulow encouraged him to testify falsely to Congress in 2017 about the duration of discussions around building a Trump property in Moscow.

The committee interviewed Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and “fixer,” behind closed doors on February 28 and March 6 — before he reported to prison to serve a three-year sentence for bank fraud, campaign finance violations and other charges — as part of an investigation into the president’s business dealings in Russia and other foreign countries.

The interview focused heavily on Cohen’s previous false statement to Congress on discussions within the Trump Organization about building a Trump Tower in Moscow as well as other topics.

View the complete May 20 article by Morgan Chalfant, Olivia Beavers, Jacqueline Thomsen and Brett Samuels on The Hill website here.

The president’s cover story about Trump Tower Moscow keeps falling apart

Credit: Laurent Gillieron, AP

When President Donald Trump was interviewed by the New York Times this week, he reiterated his claim that the Trump Organization’s abandoned Trump Tower Moscow project was not a high priority for him in 2016. Trump told the Times that he wasn’t even sure his company found a location in Moscow for the project.

But BuzzFeed News’ Emma Loop reported that according to “hundreds of pages of business documents, e-mails, text messages” that BuzzFeed has obtained, the Trump Organization was looking into at least one prime location for the skyscraper.

For the Jan. 31 New York Times interview, Trump spoke to reporters Maggie Haberman and Peter Baker as well as Publisher A. G. Sulzberger. And he said of Trump Tower Moscow, “That deal was not important. It was essentially a letter of intent or an option. I’m not even sure that they had a site.”

View the complete February 1 article by Alex Henderson on the AlterNet website here.

Moscow Skyscraper Talks Continued Through ‘the Day I Won,’ Trump Is Said to Acknowledge

Rudolph W. Giuliani, President Trump’s lawyer, said Mr. Trump recalled that the discussions about building a Trump Tower in Moscow were “going from the day I announced to the day I won.” Credit: Erin Schaff, The New York Times

WASHINGTON — President Trump was involved in discussions to build a skyscraper in Moscow throughout the entire 2016 presidential campaign, his personal lawyer said on Sunday, a longer and more significant role for Mr. Trump than he had previously acknowledged.

The comments by his lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani indicated that Mr. Trump’s efforts to complete a business deal in Russia waned only after Americans cast ballots in the presidential election.

The new timetable means that Mr. Trump was seeking a deal at the time he was calling for an end to economic sanctions against Russia imposed by the Obama administration. He was seeking a deal when he gave interviews questioning the legitimacy of NATO, a favorite talking point of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. And he was seeking a deal when, in July 2016, he called on Russia to release hacked Democratic emails that Mr. Putin’s government was rumored at the time to have stolen.

View the complete January 20 article by Mark Mazzetti, Maggie Haberman and Michael S. Schmidt on The New York TImes website here.

Trump and Cohen discussed Trump Tower Moscow right up until 2016 election

Rudy Giuliani told Chuck Todd on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that President Trump “can remember having conversations” with Michael Cohen about Trump Tower Moscow right up until the election — as late as November 2016.

One big quote: “No. It’s our understanding that it, that [talks] went on throughout 2016, not a lot of them, … but the president can remember having conversations with [Cohen] about it. … Probably up to, could be up to as far as October, November.”

Between the lines: Giuliani’s rounds on Sunday morning TV related to the BuzzFeed report over the weekend that Trump directed Cohen to lie to Congress about a deal to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.

View the complete January 20 article on the Axios website here.

President Trump Directed His Attorney Michael Cohen To Lie To Congress About The Moscow Tower Project

Donald Trump and his longtime attorney Michael Cohen. Credit: Jonathan Ernst, Reuters

President Donald Trump directed his longtime attorney Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about negotiations to build a Trump Tower in Moscow, according to two federal law enforcement officials involved in an investigation of the matter.

Trump also supported a plan, set up by Cohen, to visit Russia during the presidential campaign, in order to personally meet President Vladimir Putin and jump-start the tower negotiations. “Make it happen,” the sources said Trump told Cohen.

And even as Trump told the public he had no business deals with Russia, the sources said Trump and his children Ivanka and Donald Trump Jr. received regular, detailed updates about the real estate development from Cohen, whom they put in charge of the project.

View the complete January 17 article by Jason Leopold and Anthony Cormier on the BuzzFeed website here.

Five things to know about the Trump Tower Moscow proposal

Discussions within the Trump Organization during the 2016 presidential campaign about a proposal to build a real estate development in Moscow are a key component of the events being investigated by special counsel Robert Mueller.

The Washington Post first reported on the business proposal, which ultimately fell through, back in August 2017, but more has since come to light as a result of the special counsel’s investigation.

Michael Cohen admitted in November that the talks lasted until June 2016 — six months longer than he had previously claimed — at which point Trump was the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.

View the complete January 6 article by Morgan Chalfant on The Hill website here.

The president’s misleading statements on Trump Tower Moscow: A timeline

Donald Trump defends himself from possible conflicts of interest with foreign governments. (The Washington Post)

“Well I told you, General Flynn obviously was dealing [with Russia]. So that’s one person. But he was dealing, as he should have been. . . . Russia is a ruse. I have nothing to do with Russia. Haven’t made a phone call to Russia in years. Don’t speak to people from Russia. I have nothing to do with Russia. To the best of my knowledge, no person that I deal with does.”

— President Trump, in a news conference, on Feb. 16, 2017

President Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about his efforts to secure a real estate deal in Moscow for the Trump Organization in 2015 and 2016, while his boss was campaigning for president.

For three decades, Trump had angled to strike a real estate deal in Moscow, but he could never cinch it, even after his Miss Universe pageant was held in Moscow in 2013. In a recent court filing, prosecutors laid out extensive contact on a possible deal through 2016 between Cohen, then an executive vice president of the Trump Organization, Felix Sater, a Russian-born businessman with a checkered past, and numerous Russian nationals, including the press secretary for the president of Russia.

View the complete December 3 article by Meg Kelly on The Washington Post website here.

Scuttled Trump Tower Moscow project back in limelight after Cohen guilty plea

Trump associate and convicted felon Felix Sater told NBC News that he discussed a plan with Cohen to give a penthouse in the proposed Moscow skyscraper to Putin.

For years, President Donald Trump flirted with the idea of opening a massive, Trump-branded skyscraper in Moscow.

After holding his Miss Universe pageant there in 2013, Trump tagged Russian billionaire developer Aras Agalarov in a tweet and promised that “Trump Tower-Moscow” was next.

The project never came to be. But the Trump Organization’s attempts to get a deal green-lit caught the attention of congressional investigators and special counsel Robert Mueller probing Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and whether there was any collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian officials.

View the complete November 29 article by Ken Dilanian and Allan Smith on the NBCNews.com website here.

Trump’s long history of seeking a politically inconvenient business deal in Russia

The following article by Philip Bump was posted on the Washington Post website August 28, 2017:

On Sunday night, The Washington Post reported that President Trump’s private business was actively pursuing a real estate deal in Russia in late 2015, only to abandon it shortly before the 2016 presidential primaries. The revelation adds a new layer of context to Trump’s repeated insistence over the past year that he has no business ties to the country, suggesting that his avowed indifference toward making money in Russia was a function less of resolve than of circumstance. Continue reading “Trump’s long history of seeking a politically inconvenient business deal in Russia”