we re digging deeper on today s breaking news. president trump s former attorney and fixer michael cohen pleading guilty in special counsel robert mueller s russia investigation. cohen now admits he lied to the u.s. congress about a failed project to build a trump tower in moscow. cnn s brian todd has been looking into the trump administration s many attempts to do business in russia over the years. brian, what are you finding out? we ve learned that there were at least two attempts by donald trump to build trump towers in moscow in recent years, but his dreams of scoring big real estate deals in russia go back decades. the swagger, the sheer capitalist ambition were impressive. but success in real estate in russia eluded donald trump. the potential trump tower deal
he doesn t have any incriminating evidence about the president or himself. the man is an honest, honorable lawyer. the president insisted to reporters he s been very open about the moscow trump tower project. so he s lying about a project that everybody knew about. i mean, we were very open with it. we were thinking about building a building. i guess we had in a form, an option, i don t know what you would call it. we decided i decided ultimately not to do it. there would have been nothing wrong if i did do it. reporter: but that s not quite true. the trump moscow project only became public knowledge in february of last year when it appeared in a story in the new york times. the new revelations from cohen also run counter to what the president said about his doelgs with russia just days before he was sworn into office. i have no dealings with russia. i have no deals in russia. i have no deals that could happen in russia because we ve stayed away. reporter: still, the pr
became the presumptive republican nominee and just one month before the convention. cohen saying he told congress the deal, dubbed the moscow project, ended before the iowa caucus and the very first primary in hopes of limiting the ongoing russia investigations. cohen s revelations in court showed he discussed the status of the moscow project with donald trump on mohr than three occasions and briefed trump s family members, plus, despite previously denying any contact with moscow related to the project, cohen now admits he talked directly with somebody in vladimir putin s press secretary s office for 20 minutes in january 2016. i don t know putin. i ve never met him, but if this deal was going forward, i certainly would have started working the phones. reporter: cohen also worked with felix sater, a russian american businessman to discuss the deal and cohen even contemplated that cohen would
the president lied to the american people about various deals that were on going with the russians, would that be a problem with you? i think we have to look at comparing notes, too, but everybody looks to the president of the united states to be truthful to the american people. the president says cohen is lying right now. do you have any reason to doubt the special counsel s claim that cohen is now finally telling the truth? well, i don t know that cohen is telling the truth about everything, and i think certainly we ll have to wait to see how this evolves. what is notable is the guilty plea today did not involve collusion or collaboration with russia with respect to the investigation. we don t know if that s coming. here we are two years into this investigation not one american has been alleged by the mueller investigation to have been part of collusion or collaboration with russia in its meddling with the election. rudy giuliani says the president s written responses do mu
would sit down with vladimir putin. why would this attributed to hostilities between russia and ukraine, that s the white house s answer to that, but, of course, a lot of people are skeptical about the timing. that s a good point. chris cillizza, do you think the president was wary of the optics of sitting down with putin so soon after this bombshell? yes, and i think context matters. let s remember back in helsinki, donald trump and vladimir putin side by side. donald trump says, well, you know, i know our intelligence community says it was russia that interfered in the election and helped me and hurt hillary clinton but vladimir putin said it wasn t. we are both to blame. there was a huge uproar stateside. if he s not in a great place mentally dealing with cohen and what looks like bob mueller s investigation picking up momentum and the vice tightening, it might not be the