Accordingly President Donald Trump's former personal attorney Michael Cohen pleaded guilty in New York to lying to Congress about a Moscow real estate project that Trump and his company pursued at the same time he was securing the GOP nomination in 2016. Meanwhile in a nine page filing, prosecutors laid out a litany of lies that Cohen admitted he told to congressional lawmakers about the Moscow project an attempt, Cohen said, to minimize links between the proposed development and Trump as his presidential bid was gaining steam.
Furthermore Cohen made a surprise appearance Thursday morning before US District Judge Andrew Carter Jr., who asked him to enter his plea. Cohen's guilty plea his second in four months is the latest development in a wide-ranging investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller III into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, where separately, prosecutors accused Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort of lying to them since he pleaded guilty.
Moreover the Cohen plea is likely to further chill relations between the White House and the Justice Department, where acting attorney general Matthew Whitaker has been serving for several weeks since the president forced Jeff Sessions out of the post of attorney general. Reportedly Justice Department policies and special counsel regulations call for the attorney general to be notified of significant events in such investigations, and a person familiar with the case said Whitaker was notified ahead of time about Cohen's plea.
