guilty to a felony related to trump tower moscow and lying to congress about it, that was something he did that was not something he did with the same prosecutors from august, okay. when cohen stood up last week in federal court in new york, the prosecutors handling him in that case were actually robert mueller s prosecutors. it was the special counsel s office. and whether or not that distinction seemed super important to you at the time, that he was dealing with one group of federal prosecutors here and then mueller s office the second time he plead guilty, whether or not we groaked that that was actually an can t distinction, tonight we know why that is super important, because that s why we got these two different sets of documents, because those two different sets of prosecutors it turns out want two very different sets of things from michael cohen. and apparently what we ve learned tonight is that he has been really helpful to mueller s prosecutors, but he hasn t been so much h
that was him dealing with federal prosecutors from the southern district of new york, august. then separate matter, last week, michael cohen, surprise, turns up in federal court again in new york. but this time he pleads guilty to just one single felony. he pleads guilty to lying to congress about the trump tower moscow project, which he and the president s business and the president were pursuing during trump s presidential campaign, even though they were lying about it publicly and denying they had any such pending deals. now when cohen stood up in court last week about that to plead guilty to a felony related to trump tower moscow and lying to congress about it, that was something he did that was not something he did with the same prosecutors from august, okay. when cohen stood up last week in federal court in new york, the prosecutors handling him in that case were actually robert mueller s prosecutors. it was the special counsel s office. and whether or not that distinction seem
to the trump organization. michael cohen downplayed the financial importance of the project, but the special counsel s office is saying here that they have evidence, and they go into it in more detail, they have evidence how remunerative this deal was going to be, hundreds of millions of dollars from russian sources to the trump organization. and that is what trump was lying about during the campaign, saying he had no deals and no pending deals in russia. it was a lucrative business opportunity that sought and likely required the assistance of the russian government. so at this point in the filing the special counsel s office goes on to say actually, the first time that michael cohen came to them for his first meeting, which he requested in august 2018, he initially lied to the special counsel s office too. he kept telling those same lies about trump tower moscow. it was only after he plead guilty that he came back and met with the special counsel s office again and finally came clean
been lying. they were not able to talk us out of that determination or fix it in any way, so now, judge, we are ready to tell you, we are ready to prove it in court if you need us to, we are ready to maintain to you that he has been lying to us about five different things. and this is the part of this ten-page filing about manafort where you end up seeing some of the redactions here. it starts to look like this. but even with the redactions, you can still get the basics of this sort of five-part list of things that they say they re lying about. mueller s office says manafort lied to them about his interactions with konstantin kilimnik. remember that name? kilimnik was sort of manafort s right-hand man in his business in ukraine, and prosecutors have already said in other court filings that they believe con konstantin kilimnik has been lying. lying about the fact and frequency of what appear to be his interaction was kilimnik. but again, there are a whole bunch of redactions there. then
so at this point in the filing the special counsel s office goes on to say actually, the first time that michael cohen came to them for his first meeting, which he requested in august 2018, he initially lied to the special counsel s office too. he kept telling those same lies about trump tower moscow. it was only after he plead guilty that he came back and met with the special counsel s office again and finally came clean and told them how big a deal it was and in fact that it had not been over before the voting started. it had continued throughout the campaign during the entire time that trump was trying to line up the nomination. so cohen, quote, admitted that he had lied to congress and to the special counsel s office about the moscow project. he provided detailed information about the true circumstances of the moscow project, including its duration, the persons involved in the discussions, contact with russian government officials and discussions during the first half of 2016 about