Lanny Davis, Michael Cohen’s lawyer-turned-adviser, vigorously denied the allegation that his former client traveled to Prague during the 2016 election to arrange a payment for Russian hackers intervening in the election on then-candidate Trump’s behalf.
The allegation that Cohen traveled to Prague is a key assertion in the collection of unverified intelligence compiled by former British spy Michael Steele in attempt to demonstrate that Trump coordinated with the Kremlin to ensure his victory over Hillary Clinton.
“Did that trip ever happen?” MSNBC’s Kasie Hunt asked Davis on Sunday.
“No. No. Everybody, America, we all love Kasie’s show. No, no Prague, ever, never,” Davis replied after laughing at the mere suggestion that his client paid off hackers in Prague.
While Davis and Cohen have both emphatically denied the Prague allegation in the past, Davis’s most recent denial comes after Cohen submitted to more than 70 hours of questioning at the hands of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators.
Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison last week after pleading guilty to bank- and tax-fraud charges, as well as to campaign-finance violations related to a payment of $130,000 made to pornographer Stormy Daniels to guarantee her silence about her alleged tryst with Trump.
In addition to those pleas, which were offered to prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, Cohen also plead guilty — in a case brought by Mueller in Washington, D.C. — to lying to Congress about efforts to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.
The Washington Post‘s Greg Miller said recently that his sources at the CIA and FBI have confirmed Cohen’s claim that he has never travelled to Prague.
“We’ve talked to sources at the FBI and the CIA and elsewhere — they don’t believe that ever happened,” Miller, a Pulitzer Prize winning national-security reporter, said at a C-SPAN event in October, which aired Saturday.