Michael Cohen’s work on the proposal over the course of the campaign was first reported Monday in stories by The New York Times and The Washington Post. | Richard Dew/AP Trump Org lawyer acknowledges outreach to Putin spokesman during campaign

Trump Organization lawyer Michael Cohen acknowledged Monday that he reached out last year during the presidential campaign to a spokesman for Vladimir Putin for help on a proposal to build a Trump Tower in Moscow, but said he never heard back and the project never got off the ground.

The proposed Moscow project, Cohen told the House Intelligence Committee in a statement, was “under consideration” by President Donald Trump’s company between September 2015 and the end of January 2016, when Cohen “determined that the proposal was not feasible for a variety of business reasons and should not be pursued further.”


Trump was a candidate for the Republican nomination for president over that period, but Cohen told the committee the project “was not related in any way to Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign.”

“The decision to pursue the proposal initially, and later to abandon it, was unrelated to the Donald J. Trump for President Campaign,” Cohen said in his statement. “Both I and the Trump Organization were evaluating this proposal and many others from solely a business standpoint, and rejected going forward on that basis.”

Cohen said the Trump Organization had “solicited building designs from different architects and engaged in preliminary discussions regarding potential financing for the proposal” before abandoning it. He said he was in contact with the president about the proposal on “three occasions,” one of which involved Trump signing “a non-binding letter of intent in 2015” related to the project, but that he nor anyone else at the Trump Organization traveled to Russia for it.

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Cohen’s work on the proposal over the course of the campaign was first reported Monday in stories by The New York Times and The Washington Post, after the Trump Organization submitted internal emails to the House Intelligence Committee, which is investigating Russia’s suspected attempts to interfere in the president election last fall.

U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that the Kremlin waged cyberattacks on Democratic Party officials and engaged in a disinformation campaign in an effort to help Trump’s standing in the race and damage his opponent, Hillary Clinton. Special counsel Robert Mueller is in charge of the Justice Department investigation into the case, including whether the Trump campaign colluded in that effort.

The Times reported that one of the president’s business associates, Felix Sater, had told Cohen in 2015 that he was working on a deal with associates of Putin to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. The deal would help Trump’s presidential campaign, Sater reportedly told Cohen.

“I will get Putin on this program and we will get Donald elected,” Sater wrote, according to the Times story.

The Post followed up with a story reporting that Cohen had reached out to a spokesman for Putin, Dmitry Peskov, via email later during the presidential campaign, in January 2016, seeking help on the Trump Tower Moscow project.

Cohen acknowledged doing this in his statement to congressional investigators but said he did so at Sater’s behest because “the proposal would require approvals within the Russian government that had not been issued.”

“Those permissions were never provided,” Cohen told the committee. “I decided to abandon the proposal less than two weeks later for business reasons and do not recall any response to my email, nor any other contacts by me with Mr. Peskov or other Russian government officials about the proposal.”

Cohen said he did not “not ask or brief Mr. Trump, or any of his family” before deciding to abandon the proposal.

Later, he said, had reached out about the proposal but was not employed or paid by the Trump Organization for the Trump Tower Moscow project.