No aspect of the scandal surrounding President Donald J. Trump’s hidden relations with Russia has been more controversial than the reputed summer 2016 trip to the Czech Republic by Michael Cohen, Trump’s longtime consigliere. Now, a confluence of intelligence that’s found its way into the hands of special counsel Robert Mueller may finally provide some long-awaited answers.
As reported in the contested dossier compiled by Christopher Steele, the former British senior intelligence officer and Russia expert, Cohen sojourned to Prague in late August or early September of our election year to secretly parley with Kremlin representatives. In Steele’s telling, Cohen went to the Czech Republic to deliver cash to Russian hackers to help swing the 2016 election Trump’s way. This account, if true, describes unambiguous collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin—exactly what the president has always denied occurred. If Cohen met with Russian spies in the late summer of 2016 to conspire against Hillary Clinton, that’s something a lot of Americans would term treason.
But did it happen? Cohen has always denied it did, while Team Trump have gone out of their way to attack the story, and Steele generally. Except Steele never claimed that everything in his dossier was corroborated. It’s raw human intelligence, taken from sources Steele couldn’t always talk to directly, and it undoubtedly includes some Russian disinformation. In particular, the Kremlin has spread lies about the Prague meeting, which indicates there may be something they’re trying to hide there.
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