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We all know now that Michael Cohen lied to Congress about his dealings with Russia, but he’s far from the first one. His deceit over a proposed Trump Tower Moscow makes him the eighth witness in the many congressional Russia inquiries to lie under oath. Who else is in the long line of dissemblers?
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Jerome Corsi and Roger Stone: Conservative conspiracist Jerome Corsi told reporters that he helped his friend Roger Stone deceive Congress about a tweet that hinted Stone was tipped off about an impending WikiLeaks release. Stone tweeted in August 2016 that Clinton campaign manager John Podesta would soon have his “time in the barrel”—a hint that he could’ve been tipped off about the Podesta-focused October 2016 WikiLeaks dump.
He’s since said that the tweet referred to John Podesta’s lobbyist brother Tony and had nothing to do with the Clinton campaign or WikiLeaks. To make that explanation more plausible, Corsi says he wrote and backdated a memo to Stone about Tony Podesta’s lobbying work to make it look like the phony memo had prompted the August 2016 tweet.
That’s the story Stone used in testimony to the House Intelligence Committee when he submitted Corsi’s memo as evidence he wasn’t offering any ominous hints about a WikiLeaks release in his tweets. “In front of the grand jury, [special counsel prosecutor] Aaron Zelinsky said 'Dr. Corsi, was that a lie?'” Corsi told MSNBC about the questions prosecutors asked about the memo, “I openly admitted to them that in their terms this was a lie.” Stone told the Wall Street Journal that he stands by his House Intelligence Committee testimony.
Erik Prince: The former Blackwater boss swore up and down to the House Intelligence Committee that he bumped into the the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund purely by accident during a visit to the Seychelles to talk business with a member of the United Arab Emirates’ royal family. A witness has reportedly told the special counsel’s office that the meeting was not happenstance, as Prince testified, but set up in advance as a back channel between the Kremlin and the incoming Trump administration, given Prince family’s closeness to the Trump campaign (Prince’s sister, Betsy Devos, is Trump’s Secretary of Education). Communications reviewed by The Daily Beast support that reporting. A memo of the conversation circulated by Kirill Dmitriev afterwards showed the two discussed Russian proposals including joint operations against ISIS in Syria, dropping sanctions on Russia, and Russian investment in politically important Midwestern states.
Sam Patten: He is one of the lesser known players in the Trump-Russia drama, but one nonetheless significant enough to prosecute. Patten, a former lobbyist, popped up on Mueller’s radar for his proximity to Konstantin Kilimnik, the alleged Russian intelligence operative who worked closely with former Trump campaign chairman and currently convicted bank and tax fraudster Paul Manafort, propping up pro-Russian Ukrainian political parties. Mueller’s team referred Patten to federal prosecutors in Washington, D.C. where he was prosecuted for failing to register as a foreign agent for his lobbying on behalf of international clients. In a plea agreement, Patten admitted that he withheld information from Congress and deleted documents in order to avoid disclosing that his foreign clients had donated to the Trump campaign through the purchase of inauguration tickets.
K.T. McFarland: Former Pentagon spokesperson and Fox News pundit K.T. McFarland landed a high-level gig as the No 2 on the Trump National Security Council. But she lost her chance to stay in government by lying to Congress about her boss Michael Flynn’s contacts with the Russians. When Flynn was fired from the Trump White House for lying about his calls with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, his replacement H.R. McMaster quickly booted McFarland from her perch with the consolation prize of a nomination for her to be ambassador to Singapore.
McFarland, however, opted to lie to the Foreign Relations committee during her confirmation hearing for the ambassador job. “I am not aware of any of the events or issues,” she told Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) in written answers about Flynn’s contacts with Russian diplomats. Unfortunately for her, she did very much know about them, as emails between McFarland and Flynn about the calls clearly showed. When the New York Times published the emails, Booker put a hold on McFarland’s nomination, ending her chance of rejoining the Trump administration.
Natalia Veselnitskaya: When the Trump campaign took their infamous Trump Tower meeting with a Russian lobbyist who promised Clinton dirt, everyone wondered whether it was a back channel from the Russian government. After all, the Russian woman promising the dirt, lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, had worked for the Russian deputy general prosecutor’s office and pledged that her information was “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.” But in written testimony provided to the Senate Judiciary Committee-,she denied any coordination with the Russian government and wrote, “I operate independently of any governmental bodies.”
In July, copies of Veselnitskaya’s emails provided to the AP by an exiled Russian dissident group cast doubt on her claims of being unconnected to the Russian government. The emails showed her drafting an affidavit for Russian prosecutors. She also managed to get a senior lieutenant colonel in Russia’s interior ministry official to tag along while she lobbied the Swiss government on behalf of a private sector client.
Jeff Sessions: All of these other witnesses being less-than-straightforward about Russia followed in the footsteps of recently departed former Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Sessions fibbed about his interactions with Russia before it was cool—before a Russia inquiry even existed. In February 2017, Sessions told the Senate Judiciary committee during his confirmation hearing that “I've been called a surrogate at a time or two during that campaign and I did not have communications with the Russians and I'm unable to comment on it.” In subsequent questions for the record, he again wrote that he’d had no contact with Russian officials “about the 2016 election.” As we all now know, that wasn’t true. Sessions met with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak a handful of times in late 2016 and discussed Trump’s policy positions.
Impact: The lies told by some of these witnesses have already had a material impact on Congressional investigations and the conclusions already reached in one of them. The House Intelligence Committee’s Russia investigation led by Trump partisan Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) called it quits back in March and issued a final report a month later clearing the Trump campaign of any hint of collusion.
The Nunes report asserts that "it does not appear Cohen ever received a response from anyone affiliated with the Russian government" asking for assistance with a Trump Tower Moscow proposal and that “It appears that the Trump Tower project failed in January 2016.” In part on the basis of that, House Intelligence Committee Republicans concluded that there was “no evidence that President Trump's pre-campaign business dealings formed the basis for collusion during the campaign." Thanks to Cohen’s plea deal this week, we now know the factual basis underpinning that finding is wrong. Cohen spoke with an aide to Putin’s spokesman and planning for a Trump Tower Moscow deal continued throughout the primaries and into June 2016.
Stay tuned: Eight witnesses lying to Congress in the course of its myriad Russia investigations is plenty, but there could be more in line. As Cohen’s plea deal this week illustrates, there’s a lot we still don’t know about Mueller’s investigation and there could be more lies lurking in previous testimony. Now that Democrats are about to take over the House, it’s a good bet that they’re going to try and make up for lost time investigating even more aspects of Russian meddling in the election. If the next crop of witnesses are anything like the ones already summoned to Capitol Hill, we could see a lot more lying in front of Congress.
