Things continue to look worse and worse for Cohen and Trump. Did Trump ask that the investigation by Ukraine into Manafort be halted? Did he sell our support for Ukraine in a quid-pro-quo? Thoughts on this bombshell report out of the BBC?
Additionally, as Trump continues to further isolate our allies, how many more investigative journalists in these nations will be now seeking nefarious engagements between Trump and people in his orbit? It seems the gloves are off, and our allies are willing to report on things that will make America look bad. Does anyone else see this as an issue?
The report states that Poroshenko returned from Washington and, in August or September, 2017, decided to completely end cooperation with the US agencies investigating Manafort. He did not give an order to implement this decision until November 2017.
The order became known to the US government after scheduled visits by Poroshenko’s senior aide to see Mueller and the CIA director, in November and December, were cancelled.
The report says that an “element of the understanding” between Poroshenko and Trump was that Ukraine agreed to import US coal and signed a $1bn contract for American-made diesel trains.
These deals can only be understood as Poroshenko buying American support, the reports say.
From the article. This part is what really concerns me here as well.
The White House schedule said only that Mr Poroshenko would “drop in” to the Oval Office while Mr Trump was having staff meetings.
That had been agreed through official channels. Mr Cohen’s fee was for getting Mr Poroshenko more than just an embarrassingly brief few minutes of small talk and a handshake, the senior official said. But negotiations continued until the early hours of the day of the visit.
Seems that if this is the case, that they negotiated the FEE up until hours before the visit, that Trump and whoever handles scheduling would have to be aware of this. Cohen would have had to convey to the president that their demands had been met and that Poroshenko should get more time.
