Washington: US President Donald Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen told lawmakers under oath last year that he did not know if the then candidate was aware of a Trump Tower meeting with Russians in 2016, three sources with knowledge of Cohen’s testimony have told news website Axios.
The story runs contrary to other news outlets reporting in the past month that Cohen was willing to tell special counsel Robert Mueller that Trump knew about the meeting in advance.
Cohen testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee in the fall of 2017. According to three sources, Cohen not only said that he himself had no foreknowledge of the meeting, but that he had no idea whether Trump did either, Axios reported.
At the June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower, Russians offered to provide damaging information about his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.
Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., along with Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and senior campaign aide Paul Manafort, took part in the meeting with Nataliya Veselnitskaya, a Russian lawyer and acknowledged Kremlin informant.
Cohen pleaded guilty on Tuesday to eight criminal charges of tax evasion, bank fraud and campaign finance violations. He told a federal court in New York that Trump had directed him to arrange payments ahead of the 2016 presidential election to silence two women who said they had sex with Trump.
The White House pushed back forcefully on Wednesday against suggestions that the plea deal struck by Cohen implicated the president in a crime.
