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On April 9, 2018, the FBI searched the apartment, law office and hotel room of Michael Cohen, who was the Vice President of The Trump Organization and was also Trump's personal lawyer.
Four days later, on April 13, the Greeley Tribune published an article titled Mueller has evidence Trump lawyer met in Prague with Russians during campaign, sources say, written by investigative journalists Peter Stone and Greg Gordon. Both journalists were accomplished and respected.
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Stone's journalist career has been summarized as follows:
Peter Stone is a Washington-based investigative journalist who has covered a wide array of lobbying, legal, and campaign finance issues, working for National Journal, McClatchy newspapers, and Legal Times, among other publications. As a freelancer, his work has also appeared in The Guardian, the New York Review of Books Daily, Mother Jones, and many other news outlets. He is the author of Heist: Superlobbyist Jack Abramoff, His Republican Allies and the Buying of Washington.
For example, Stone's articles published by The Guardian are listed here.
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Gordon's journalist career has been summarized as follows:
Since joining McClatchy’s national staff in 2006, he has helped expose Wall Street’s role in the 2008 financial crisis, partisanship in the Justice Department and gaps in U.S. homeland security. In 2010, he ... was honored as finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for their financial reporting ... In 2008, he ... won a McClatchy ``President’s Award’’ and Scripps Howard’s Raymond Clapper Memorial Award for Washington reporting ...
Earlier, Gordon spent 13 years with the Minneapolis Star Tribune and McClatchy, covering the prosecution of al-Qaida terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui and writing about asbestos in the workplace, money and politics, aviation, law enforcement and the environment. He also worked for The Detroit News’ Washington bureau and spent 18 years with United Press International, where he headed its Washington investigative team and won the 1983 Raymond Clapper award for coverage of an EPA scandal.
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Stone and Gordon wrote in their April 13 article that their information came from two sources. The article indicated that the two sources were staff members of two Congressional committees -- one intelligence committee in the House and one intelligence committee in the Senate.
I speculate that one source leaked to Stone, and the other source leaked to Gordon. I speculate further that Stone's source advised him to consult with Gordon and that Gordon's source advised him to consult with Stone. In other words, the two leakers coordinated with each other in order to cause their leaks to be reported cooperatively by two respected investigative journalists. The leakers intended that this information would receive much intention among the well-informed public.
That public was supposed to understand that the FBI raids on Cohen were not justified just by Steele's Dossier. Rather, the FBI had obtained some additional proof, which Stone and Gordon did not describe yet in this April 13 article.
Stone's and Gordon's April 13, 2018, article included the following passages (emphasis added):
The Justice Department special counsel has evidence Donald Trump’s personal lawyer and confidant, Michael Cohen, secretly made a late-summer trip to Prague during the 2016 presidential campaign, according to two sources familiar with the matter. ...
It would also be one of the most significant developments thus far in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of whether the Trump campaign and the Kremlin worked together to help Trump win the presidency. ...
Cohen has denied for months that he ever has been in Prague or colluded with Russia during the campaign. Neither he nor his lawyer responded to requests for comment. ...
But investigators have traced evidence that Cohen entered the Czech Republic through Germany, apparently in August or early September 2016 as the former spy [Christopher Steele] reported, said the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Cohen wouldn’t have needed a passport for such a trip, because both countries are in the Schengen Area, in which 26 nations have open borders. The disclosure still left a puzzle: The sources did not say whether Cohen took a commercial flight or private jet to Europe, and gave no explanation of why no record of such a trip has surfaced. ...
Last August [2017] an attorney for Cohen, Stephen Ryan, delivered to Congress a point-by-point rebuttal of the dossier’s allegations. “Mr. Cohen is not aware of any ‘secret TRUMP campaign/Kremlin relationship,’ ” Ryan said.
Democratic investigators for the House and Senate intelligence committees, which are conducting parallel inquiries into Russia’s election interference, also are skeptical about whether Cohen was truthful about his 2016 travels to Europe when the interviewed him last October, two people familiar with those investigations said this week. Cohen has publicly acknowledged making three trips to Europe that year – to Italy in July, England in early October and a third after Trump’s November election. The investigators intend to press Cohen for more information, the sources said.
One of the sources said congressional investigators have “a high level of interest” in Cohen’s European travel, with their doubts fueled by what they deem to be weak documentation Cohen provided about his whereabouts around the time the Prague meeting supposedly occurred.
Cohen has said he was only in New York and briefly in Los Angeles in August [2016], when the meeting may have occurred, though the sources said it also could have been held in early September [2016]. ...
If Cohen met with Russians and hackers in Prague as described in the dossier, it could be the most compelling evidence so far that the Russians and Trump campaign aides collaborated. ...
Cohen is in the spotlight because of the FBI raids on his offices and home in New York. Various news organizations have reported that investigators principally sought evidence on non-Russia matters, including a covert $130,000 payment Cohen made days before the 2016 election to porn star Stormy Daniels to silence her about an alleged affair with Trump. The FBI raids also seized some of Cohen’s computers and cellphones, among other evidence, according to these reports. ...
Soon after Trump took office, The New York Times reported that Cohen was involved in promoting a secret “peace plan” for Ukraine and Russia that was the brainchild of a little-known Ukrainian legislator, Andrii Artemenko. The plan would have ended U.S. sanctions against Moscow and allowed Russia, if it pulled back militants invading Ukraine, to keep control of Crimea under a 50- to 100-year lease, if voters approved.
In February 2017, he [Cohen] told the Times, he left the plan on the desk of Trump’s national security adviser, Michael Flynn, who resigned days later and later pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about contacts with the Russian ambassador. But in subsequent interviews, Cohen denied delivering the plan to the White House.
Knowledge that Cohen may have traveled to Prague during the campaign could heighten Trump’s risk of being prosecuted for obstruction of justice if news reports are accurate that he is considering firing Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who oversees the Mueller investigation ....
Although the two leakers apparently were Congressional staff members, they must have obtained their information from the the Special Counsel Robert Mueller's staff. (See the April 13 article's first sentence, above).
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Continued in Part 5.
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