President Trump's lawyer, Michael Cohen, just hurt his client's narrative that the ongoing special counsel investigation of Trump's 2016 presidential campaign is a...



WITCH HUNT! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 23, 2018



The BBC's Paul Wood reported today that Cohen arranged a June 2017 meeting between Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Trump at the White House. And Wood's reporting suggests that the Poroshenko-Trump meeting was arranged after Cohen was paid between $400,000 and $600,000 by Ukrainian intermediaries linked to Poroshenko.

Cohen was not, as would be required by federal law, listed as a foreign agent for Ukraine.

Wood points out that there is no evidence Trump was aware of the payments. But Cohen's conduct here may lead to serious criminal charges for the lawyer who is already under federal investigation.

Even if Trump has done nothing wrong himself, this incident lends credibility to the argument that the president's affairs and those around him at least deserve the scrutiny they are now receiving. If nothing else, it strongly suggests that Trump's argument of a "witch hunt" isn't exactly the whole story here.

If Cohen is charged in relation to this meeting, it raises the question as to whether he will cooperate with federal investigators in return for a lighter sentence. And if he does, how will that affect Trump in terms of what the president has said he knew about payments to Stormy Daniels? What will it mean for other considerations of the president's business affairs as known to Cohen?

One final point from Wood's story. The highly respected BBC journalist (Wood is no hack or biased reporter) also notes that Ukraine's anti-corruption investigation into former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort came to an end shortly after Trump met with Poroshenko. You can bet that special counsel Robert Mueller will look into whether that was just a coincidence.