Earlier this month came the news of a spectacularly strange story in which Kremlin-backed politician Andrey Artemenko went through friends and associates of Donald Trump to deliver a blackmail plan to Michael Flynn’s office. The plan would have involved Trump using Russian blackmail material to oust the president of the Ukraine, so Artemenko could take over the country and give Crimea to Russia. Some of the conspirators are denying this or changing their stories. But now Artemenko is confirming the entire thing.

Andrey Artemenko is now confirming that he met with current Donald Trump attorney Michael Cohen and former Donald Trump business associate Felix Sater in New York last month to deliver the blackmail plan to them. He also says he later received “confirmation” from Sater that the plan had in fact been delivered to Trump’s White House, according to Business Insider. But the plan appeared to have fallen apart when Michael Flynn subsequently resigned due to the exposure of his own role in the Trump-Russia scandal.

This confirmation from Andrey Artemenko is crucial because Michael Cohen gave two different stories to the media about the conspiracy, both confirming and denying it. This is the same Michael Cohen who was accused of negotiations with the Russians over Trump’s own blackmail problems, though Cohen denies this.

Andrey Artemenko’s open admission of his role in the Russia-Ukraine blackmail plan is notable in that a prosecutor in the Ukraine recently announced that Artemenko may be facing treason charges for his role in the plot, which involved ousting the legitimately elected president of the Ukraine. It’s unclear if Artemenko is now coming clean as part of an attempt to get himself out from under those charges. But in any case he’s now directly implicating both Cohen and Sater in the conspiracy. Contribute to Palmer Report

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