It seems that Special Counsel Robert Mueller has evidence that Cohen visited Prague in 2016 according to the now infamous Steele dossier… the problem? Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, denies it…
“Bad reporting, bad information and bad story by same reporter Peter Stone,” Cohen wrote on Twitter on Saturday.
The source for this claim, McClatchy, says that Cohen did, in fact, enter the Czech Republic through Germany:
He wouldn’t have needed a passport for such a trip, because both countries are in the so-called Schengen Area in which 26 nations operate with open borders. The disclosure still left a puzzle: The sources did not say whether Cohen took a commercial flight or private jet to Europe, and gave no explanation as to why no record of such a trip has surfaced.
If this does end up true, this is a huge problem for the lawyer though according to Cohen he was visiting universities in Los Angeles with his son when these claims came to light in the dossier.
As reported by Chuck Ross for The Daily Caller:
The dossier, which was written by former British spy Christopher Steele, alleges that Cohen secretly visited Prague in August or September 2016 in order to meet with Russian government officials to discuss a conspiracy to hack Democrats’ email systems.
Cohen is suing BuzzFeed News, which published the 35-page report on Jan. 10, 2017. BuzzFeed did not verify the allegations against Cohen, and no news outlets have reported that there is any evidence that Cohen visited Prague.
CNN’s Jake Tapper reported on the day that the dossier was published that a government source told him that a different Michael Cohen was who visited Prague.
Cohen has provided photos of the inside of his passport to BuzzFeed in an effort to prove that he did not visit the Czech Republic.