Cohen claims 'close and regular contact' with Trump team while preparing to lie to Congress

Michael Cohen
(Image credit: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

President Trump's former personal attorney Michael Cohen "remained in close and regular contact with White House-based staff and legal counsel," his lawyers said in a court filing late Friday, while preparing what he now says was a false statement to Congress about the president's real estate endeavors in Russia during his campaign.

The filing sought a reduced sentence for Cohen, who pleaded guilty Thursday to lying to the Senate Intelligence Committee about a deal to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. Cohen crafted that statement, his lawyers wrote, to maintain Trump team messaging which "portray[ed] contact with Russian representatives" as "having effectively terminated before the Iowa caucuses of February 1, 2016."

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.