President Trump on Friday fired off his most personal attack yet on former attorney Michael Cohen — all while denying advance knowledge of the June 2016 meeting between his son and Russians peddling imaginary dirt on Hillary Clinton.
“I did NOT know of the meeting with my son, Don Jr. Sounds to me like someone is trying to make up stories in order to get himself out of an unrelated jam (Taxi cabs maybe?),” the President tweeted. “He even retained Bill and Crooked Hillary’s lawyer. Gee, I wonder if they helped him make a choice!”
Months before the 2016 election, Donald Trump Jr. and other top campaign officials including Jared Kushner and then-campaign manager Paul Manafort, met with a Kremlin-linked lawyer and Russian businessmen at Trump Tower. The President has repeatedly insisted he was unaware of the meeting until the days before it made headlines in July 2017.
Trump’s taunting tweet follows reports that Cohen has countered the President’s denials and is willing to assert to Special Counsel Robert Mueller that Trump had been aware of the sit-down before it occurred.
Sources told CNN Thursday Cohen has alleged that he and several others were present when Trump Jr. told his father about the Russians’ offer. The President’s former fixer, also a top Trump organization employee for a decade, additionally claims Trump approved going forward with the meeting.
Cohen is under criminal investigation in the Southern District of New York related to his personal business dealings, including his ownership of taxis medallions. The small plaque, placed on the hoods of New York cabs, is required to operate a yellow car in the city.
An FBI raid on his Manhattan office in April sought information specifically linked to taxi owners who had financial dealings with Cohen.
His business partner, Evgeny (Gene) Friedman, also known as the “Taxi King,” last June was arrested on charges of not paying more than $5 million taxes related to his taxi business. In May, he pleaded guilty to one count of evading just $50,000 in taxes in exchange for agreeing to assist federal or state prosecutors.
CNN recently calculated Cohen owes more than $280,000 in taxes related to his taxi business.
Davis, a longtime Clinton confidante, signed on as Cohen’s attorney earlier this month, according to CNN. He met Bill and Hillary at Yale Law School and went on to serve as special White House counsel during the Clinton administration.
Davis defended the former President against no shortage of public allegations through the 1990s — the Washington Post in a previous profile referred to him as “Clinton’s media snake charmer” — including fund-raising issues surrounding his 1996 re-election effort.
Trump kicked off his tweetstorm Friday with a familiar complaint — that “the ridiculous news that the highly conflicted Robert Mueller and his gang of 13 Angry Democrats cannot find Collusion.” He lashed out at Mueller specifically for his decision to review the President’s Twitter feed as part of a obstruction of justice investigation.
“Now they are looking at my Tweets (along with 53 million other people) — the rigged Witch Hunt Continues!” he raged. “How stupid and unfair to our Country.”
