McClatchy reported on Friday evening that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s team has evidence of a trip by President Trump’s personal lawyer to Prague in the late summer of 2016. Overseas travel to non-Russian countries might strike some observers as an incremental — if not unimportant — development in Mueller’s probe. That is not the case. Confirmation that Cohen visited Prague could be quite significant.
A trip to Prague by Cohen was included in the dossier of reports written by former British intelligence official Christopher Steele. Those reports, paid for by an attorney working for Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee, included a broad array of raw intelligence, much of which has not been corroborated and much of which would probably defy easy corroboration, focusing on internal political discussions in the Kremlin.
Cohen’s visiting Prague, though, is concrete. Over the course of three of the dossier’s 17 reports, the claim is outlined — but we hasten to note that these allegations have not been confirmed by The Washington Post.
It suggests that Cohen took over management of the relationship with Russia after campaign chairman Paul Manafort was fired from the campaign in August (because of questions about his relationship with a political party in Ukraine). Cohen is said to have met secretly with people in Prague — possibly at the Russian Center for Science and Culture — in the last week of August or the first of September. He allegedly met with representatives of the Russian government, possibly including officials of the Presidential Administration Legal Department; Oleg Solodukhin (who works with the Russian Center for Science and Culture); or Konstantin Kosachev, head of the foreign relations committee in the upper house of parliament. A planned meeting in Moscow, the dossier alleges, was considered too risky, given that a topic of conversation was how to divert attention from Manafort’s links to Russia and a trip to Moscow by Carter Page in July. Another topic of conversation, according to the dossier: allegedly paying off “Romanian hackers” who had been targeting the Clinton campaign.
There is a lot there — but it hinged on Cohen’s having traveled to Prague. If he was not in Prague, none of this happened. If he visited Prague? Well, then we go a level deeper.
McClatchy notes that there is no evidence of who, if anyone, Cohen met with, but that the time frame was in late August or early September, as the dossier suggests.
Which brings us to the other reason this development could be significant.
Cohen, for months, has consistently argued that he never made any such trip.
When the dossier was first published by BuzzFeed, Cohen replied to this allegation specifically in a somewhat odd tweet.
Since countries don’t stamp the front of your passport when you visit, it is not clear what this was meant to show. Nor would showing his passport have been exculpatory if he’d shown, say, a stamp from having entered France or Spain, since travel within most of the European Union doesn’t require additional checks at individual borders.
That, in fact, is what McClatchy alleges: That its sources say Cohen entered the Czech Republic through Germany. A Czech publication reported shortly after the allegation was made that government intelligence officials in that country had no record of Cohen’s visiting. One source said that “if there was such a meeting, he didn’t arrive in the Czech Republic by plane.” McClatchy’s report doesn’t contradict that.
The day after Cohen’s tweet, Trump held a news conference.
“He brings his passport to my office,” the then president-elect said in response to a question. “I say, ‘Hey, wait a minute.’ He didn’t leave the country. He wasn’t out of the country. They had Michael Cohen of the Trump Organization was in Prague. It turned out to be a different Michael Cohen. It’s a disgrace what took place. It’s a disgrace and I think they ought to apologize to start with Michael Cohen.”
That part about the “different Michael Cohen” doesn’t seem to be true. Nor does the part about Cohen not having left the country.
Cohen showed his passport to BuzzFeed. The only travel into the proper area indicated by passport stamps was a trip to and from Italy from July 9 to 17. But note that this is too early for Steele’s time frame — and for the assertion that it was a response to the firing of Manafort. How Cohen would have gotten to Prague is still unclear.
But this contradiction between a clear allegation from the Steele dossier and the assertion that it wasn’t true by Cohen and Trump helped drive the idea that the dossier was broadly discredited shortly after its release. Pick out the Prague trip and nothing that follows could have happened. Put the Prague trip back into the mix? A lot of the other parts of that allegation now become possible.* What’s more, it undermines the credibility of those who insisted that the claim was completely without merit.
Look at it another way: If the central conceit of the Steele’s claim were accurate — that Cohen was working with agents of the Russian government directly to aid Trump’s candidacy — it would be very hard to argue that no collusion took place. That likely requires Cohen’s having been in Prague.
This is our first significant indication that he might have been.
* It’s easy to cherry-pick some aspects which ring true. For example: A source of leaked information from the Democratic National Committee who claimed to be Romanian was actually a Russian intelligence official. Carter Page denied having met with Russian officials during his trip in July, until the House Intelligence Committee got him to admit that he had, however briefly. But much more of the dossier’s allegations lacks any resemblance to what is known.
Western leaders warned Syria on Saturday that they could launch further missile strikes if chemical weapons are used again, while the pre-dawn attacks were denounced by Damascus and its backers as illegal actions that would carry repercussions.
U.S. forces were “locked and loaded” to strike again if Syria unleashed another chemical assault, said Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, at an emergency Security Council meeting called by Russia.
But one major worry appeared to ease: That the coordinated attacks by the United States, France and Britain late Friday could have set off a direct confrontation with Syria’s most powerful military partner, Russia.
At the Pentagon, the director of the Joint Staff, Lt. Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, said the more than 100 missile strikes delivered a blow to the “heart” of Syria’s chemical weapons network. He acknowledged, however, that Syria retained “residual” capacity, but gave no details on the scope of what could be left.
Later, Russia’s U.N. ambassador, Vasily Nebenzia, hammered away at Western allies for what he termed “aggression” that violated international sovereignty. U.N. Secretary General António Guterres said he hoped to send international inspectors to the missile attack targets in Syria.
There was, however, a wider sense of relief that the strikes on three targets — believed to be research and storage cogs in Syrian’s chemical weapons production — had not caused Russian casualties, which could have led to a direct confrontation between Washington and Moscow.
The Pentagon said a barrage of more than 40 Syrian surface-to-air missiles had “no material effect” on the allied attack, which McKenzie said struck their targets. None of the more sophisticated air defenses that Moscow has positioned in Syria were employed, he said. The general also denied assertions from Russian officials that some incoming missiles were intercepted by the Soviet-made antimissile batteries used by Syrian forces.
McKenzie described one site, the Barzah Research and Development Center, near Damascus, as a “core” facility for Syria’s chemical weapons program.
“They lost lot of equipment. They lost a lot of material, and that’s going to have a significant effect,” McKenzie told reporters at the Pentagon.
But officials also acknowledged that Assad would retain what McKenzie characterized as a “residual” Syrian chemical capability. Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White said the United States would consider additional attacks if Assad resumed chemical weapons use.
The rhetoric from Syria’s backers was harsh.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said the strikes would have “a destructive effect on the entire system of international relations.”
Airstrikes in Syria hit three chemical weapons facilities, including one in Damascus View Graphic Airstrikes in Syria hit three chemical weapons facilities, including one in Damascus
But there were no signs the Russian military was preparing a retaliatory response that could bring Moscow and Washington into direct confrontation.
Syrian television called the attacks a “flagrant violation” of international law, and Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, derided them as a “military crime.”
[Russia responds to airstrike with harsh words but no fire]
But apart from Tehran and Moscow, which support the Syrian government, much of the world saw the U.S.-led strikes as justified and hoped it would prove a deterrent to Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
British Prime Minister Theresa May called the three-nation attacks a success and were “right and legal” in response to the Syrian government’s suspected use of chemical weapons a week ago in rebel-held Douma, killing dozens of people.
The head of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, predicted: “This will reduce the regime’s ability to further attack the people of Syria with chemical weapons.”
Washington, Paris and London said they have proof, without identifying it, that chlorine gas caused victims to suffocate.
Inspectors from the international Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons were expected to make their initial foray Saturday to Douma. They will collect soil samples and talk to witnesses in attempts to pin down what occurred.
For the moment, the likelihood of more military action appeared diminished.
[Damascus defiant as Trump orders strikes after Syria chemical attack]
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis called the overnight attacks a “one time shot.” French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said no more attacks were planned for now but threatened more strikes if the Syrian military used chemical weapons again.
“A perfectly executed strike last night,” tweeted President Trump. “Thank you to France and the United Kingdom for their wisdom and the power of their fine Military. Could not have had a better result. Mission Accomplished!”
More immediately, the action is likely to stir more heated exchanges at the U.N. Security Council, which met three times last week to discuss Syria. But any action was blocked by the vote powers of Russia, on one side, and the United States, France and Britain on the other.
China, the fifth permanent member, said through its foreign ministry that it opposed the use of force, urged negotiation and called for a “comprehensive, impartial and objective” investigation into the allegation that chemical weapons were used.
The Russian Defense Ministry reported that its forces did not mobilize its air defenses — giving further signals that the attack would not open up a wider crisis between the two former Cold War foes.
[Full transcript of Trump’s address on Syria airstrikes]
The attack involved munitions fired from aircraft and naval vessels, including about 100 Tomahawk cruise missiles, according to a Defense Department official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational details. The Pentagon also employed the B-1 strategic bomber.
The assault came despite the lack of a definitive independent finding that chemical weapons were used or who had deployed them. An initial team of inspectors had only arrived in Syria on Friday.
Mattis declined to say whether he thought the attack would prevent Assad from using chemical weapons again.
“Nothing is certain in these kinds of matters. However, we used a little over double the number of weapons this year than we used last year,” he said. “It was done on targets that we believed were selected to hurt the chemical weapons program. We confined it to the chemical weapons-type targets.”
Mattis said that to his knowledge there were no U.S. or allied losses from the strikes Friday.
Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the only communications that took place between the United States and Russia before the operation were “the normal deconfliction of the airspace, the procedures that are in place for all of our operations in Syria.”
The European Union voiced support for the allies. European Council President Donald Tusk tweeted, “The E.U. will stand with our allies on the side of justice.”
In the wake of last weekend’s gruesome attack, some U.S. officials advocated a larger, and therefore riskier, strike than the limited action Trump ordered in April 2017, also in response to suspected chemical weapons use.
That attack involved 59 Tomahawk missiles fired from two U.S. warships in the Mediterranean Sea. It fulfilled Trump’s vow that chemical weapons are a “red line” that he, unlike his predecessor Barack Obama, would not allow Assad to cross. But the airfield targeted by the Pentagon resumed operations shortly after the attack and, according to Western intelligence assessments, chemical attacks resumed.
Risks of the renewed attack include the possibility of a dangerous escalation with Russia, whose decision to send its military to Syria in 2015 reversed the course of the war in Assad’s favor. Since then, Russia has used Syria as a testing ground for some of its most sophisticated weaponry.
Since last year’s strike, multiple chemical attacks have been reported in opposition areas, most of them involving chlorine rather than the nerve agent sarin, as was used in 2017, suggesting the government may have adjusted its tactics.
Russia’s military had threatened to shoot down any U.S. missiles that put Russian lives at risk. Russia could also fire at the launch platforms used — potentially U.S. planes or ships. Russian officials had said U.S. and Russian military staffs remained in contact regarding Syria, even as Russian media carried stories in recent days about the potential outbreak of “World War III” as a consequence of a U.S. airstrike against Assad.
Louisa Loveluck in Beirut, Anton Troianovski in Moscow, Simon Denyer in Beijing, and Brian Murphy and Paul Sonne in Washington contributed to this report.
