Donald Trump May Have Known About Election Hacking, ‘Cheered It On,’ Michael Cohen’s Lawyer Lanny Davis Says
In what would be the clearest evidence yet of collusion between the 2016 Donald Trump presidential campaign and Russia, Michael Cohen may know about the “conspiracy” and will be “more than happy” to tell Russia investigation Special Counsel Robert Mueller “all that he knows,” according to Cohen’s lawyer Lanny Davis in an interview on the MSNBC cable news network Tuesday night.
In fact, not only may Trump have known about “the computer crime of hacking” in the 2016 campaign, but he might have also even “cheered it on,” Davis told The Rachel Maddow Show.
On July 13, Mueller indicted 12 Russian government intelligence officers and charged them in connection with the hacking attack on the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign, as the Inquisitr reported. The hackers stole thousands of internal emails and released them on the internet, resulting in a series of problems for Clinton and the Democrats including the resignation of DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman-Schulz, as Think Progress reported at the time.
Mueller as far back as February was, the Inquisitr reported, investigating whether Trump had inside, advance knowledge of the Russian hacks, and his former aide Omarosa Manigault Newman has alleged that Trump “absolutely” knew in advance of the email hacking by the Russian agents, as the Inquisitr also reported.
Davis also told Maddow that Cohen would also talk to Mueller about the Trump campaign’s possible “conspiracy to collude and corrupt the American democracy system in the 2016 election which the Trump Tower meeting was all about.”
By “the Trump Tower meeting,” Davis was referring to the June 9, 2016, meeting between a group of Russians led by a Kremlin-linked lawyer, and Donald Trump Jr., Manafort, and Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, as CNN has chronicled. According to emails revealed by Trump Jr., the meeting was organized as “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.”
Lanny Davis: "Mr. Cohen has knowledge on certain subjects that should be of interest to the special counsel and is more than happy to tell the special counsel all that he knows." pic.twitter.com/NxPmShwunw
— Maddow Blog (@MaddowBlog) August 22, 2018
When Cohen pleaded guilty to eight charges in federal court in New York on Tuesday, he directly implicated Trump in two of those charges, the Inquisitr reported earlier. Under oath, Rogen said that “a candidate for federal office” later named as Trump by Davis ordered him to make payments to two women who say that they had sexual relations with Trump in 2006 — adult film actress Stormy Daniels and former Playboy Magazine centerfold model Karen McDougal.
Cohen told the judge in the Southern District of New York federal court that he arranged the payments at Trump’s instructions “for the principal purpose of influencing the election.”
