Trump had conversations on 'Trump Tower' in Moscow up to the 2016 US elections, says his lawyer

Trump Tower had been a subject of scrutiny because Trump had earlier denied any business dealing with the Russians.

Donald Trump (Source: PTI)

New Delhi: US President Donald Trump’s lawyer on Sunday revealed that Trump had a conversation about a proposed project to build a Trump Tower in Moscow throughout the 2016 presidential campaign. President’s attorney Rudy Giuliani said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that Trump’s conversations with his then previous lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, who was spearheading the negotiations in Moscow, continued throughout the year until October or November 2016. "It's our understanding that they went on throughout 2016 there weren't a lot of them, but there were conversations," Giuliani said. The former New York mayor said he doesn’t remember the exact dates, but the president can remember having conversations with him about it. Trump Tower had been a subject of scrutiny because Trump had earlier denied any business dealing with the Russians. He has since acknowledged that Cohen pursued a deal with the Russians well into 2016, but has insisted there was nothing wrong with seeking business opportunities while running for office. Trump’s former attorney Cohen, who was sentenced to three years in prison for an assortment of felonies, has pleaded guilty to lying to Congress in 2017 when he testified that the negotiations had ended by January of 2016. He later admitted, they had gone on much longer, until June of 2016, when Trump had become the presumptive nominee of the Republican party. The latest disclosure extends the time of negotiations to the presidential elections in November. Giuliani asserted that Trump had fully answered questions about the Trump Tower put to him by Special Counsel Rober Mueller who is probing whether the Trump campaign got together with a Russian effort to influence the 2016 elections in his favour, as well as possible obstruction by the president. Shifting the  entire responsibility of the talks on Cohen, Giuliani said that it was him driving the project. He presented that Trump’s role in Moscow negotiations were that of a passive participant who was too engrossed in campaign to pay much attention to it.