Much Ado About Nothing? Why Trump Allies Are Unfazed by Michael Cohen's Plea Deal

Jennifer Wishon
11-30-2018

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WASHINGTON – He once said he'd take a bullet for President Donald Trump. Now the president's former attorney, Michael Cohen, has switched teams – to work with special counsel Robert Mueller as he continues his Russia probe.

It's part of a plea deal Cohen struck after pleading guilty to lying to Congress about a Trump Organization real estate deal.

"He’s (Cohen) a weak person," President Trump told reporters as he left Washington Thursday for Argentina to attend the G-20 summit.

"What he's trying to do is get a reduced sentence. So he's lying about a project that everybody knew about," he continued.

During a closed session of Congress, Cohen says he lied to lawmakers about a proposed Trump real estate project in Moscow.

Cohen told lawmakers it was abandoned in January of 2016 before the Republican primary got underway, but now he says project planning continued into June – deep into the presidential campaign.

However, the president says he ultimately put a stop to the deal because of his run for the White House.

"There would be nothing wrong if I did do it. I was running my business while I was campaigning. There was a good chance that I wouldn't have won. In which case I would have gone back into the business -- and why should I lose lots of opportunities?" he told the White House press corps.

Some fear Cohen's testimony may have put the president in a perjury trap, but Trump attorney Rudy Guiliani says the president's written answers to Mueller about the Moscow project, submitted last week, line up with Cohen's version.

On Friday, the president tweeted that he was open about his business dealings during the campaign, writing that he"lightly looked at doing a building somewhere in Russia. Put up zero money, zero guarantees and didn't do the project. Witch hunt!"

The mainstream media is having a field day with these latest developments.

CBN News Chief Political Analyst David Brody has this take.

"This is a big whopper of a non-story, non-story," he said on the CBN News Channel's "Faith Nation" program.

"This is about a Trump Tower deal in Moscow that was never a deal, by the way, and Michael Cohen lied to Congress – ok – that's a problem. But for Donald Trump and collusion, what in the world does this have anything to do with collusion? But if you look at the mainstream media network you would think it's the end of the world," Brody continued.

Former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski tells CBN News Cohen's lies have nothing to do with the president.

"Michael has his own legal issues that he's created that have nothing to do with the outcome of the election – they had nothing to do with some type of fake Russian collusion story," Lewandowski says.

Meanwhile, President Trump cancelled a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin planned at the G-20 summit citing his disapproval of Russian aggression in Ukraine.

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About The Author

Jennifer
Wishon

As Senior Washington Correspondent for CBN News, Jennifer covers the intersection of faith and politics - often producing longer format stories that dive deep into the most pressing issues facing Americans today. A 20-year veteran journalist, Jennifer has spent most of her career covering politics, most recently at the White House as CBN's chief White House Correspondent covering the Obama and Trump administrations. She's also covered Capitol Hill along with a slew of major national stories from the 2008 financial crisis to the 2020 coronavirus pandemic and every election in between. Jennifer
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