Russian To Judgment, Con't

One of the big mysteries involving Michael Cohen, the Steele Dossier, and Russia is "was he in Prague meeting with Russians during the 2016 campaign?"  The Mueller team hinted strongly that Cohen was in Prague in the summer of 2016 back in a McClatchy story in April.

The Justice Department special counsel has evidence that Donald Trump’s personal lawyer and confidant, Michael Cohen, secretly made a late-summer trip to Prague during the 2016 presidential campaign, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

Confirmation of the trip would lend credence to a retired British spy’s report that Cohen strategized there with a powerful Kremlin figure about Russian meddling in the U.S. election.

It would also be one of the most significant developments thus far in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of whether the Trump campaign and the Kremlin worked together to help Trump win the White House. Undercutting Trump’s repeated pronouncements that “there is no evidence of collusion,” it also could ratchet up the stakes if the president tries, as he has intimated he might for months, to order Mueller’s firing.

The Cohen/Prague story is important because it's basicallt collusion 101 if Cohen was there on behalf of Trump.  Now the same McClatchy reporters in the April story, Peter Stone and Greg Gordon, go one step further detailing at least one piece of evidence that Cohen was in Prague at the time...or at least his cell phone was.

A mobile phone traced to President Donald Trump’s former lawyer and “fixer” Michael Cohen briefly sent signals ricocheting off cell towers in the Prague area in late summer 2016, at the height of the presidential campaign, leaving an electronic record to support claims that Cohen met secretly there with Russian officials, four people with knowledge of the matter say.

During the same period of late August or early September, electronic eavesdropping by an Eastern European intelligence agency picked up a conversation among Russians, one of whom remarked that Cohen was in Prague, two people familiar with the incident said.

The phone and surveillance data, which have not previously been disclosed, lend new credence to a key part of a former British spy’s dossier of Kremlin intelligence describing purported coordination between Trump’s campaign and Russia’s election meddling operation.

The dossier, which Trump has dismissed as “a pile of garbage,” said Cohen and one or more Kremlin officials huddled in or around the Czech capital to plot ways to limit discovery of the close “liaison” between the Trump campaign and Russia.

The new information regarding the recovery of Cohen’s cell phone location doesn’t explain why he was apparently there or who he was meeting with, if anyone. But it adds to evidence that Cohen was in or near Prague around the time of the supposed meeting.

Both of the newly surfaced foreign electronic intelligence intercepts were shared with Special Counsel Robert Mueller, people familiar with the matter said. Mueller is investigating Russia’s 2016 election interference and whether Trump’s campaign colluded in the scheme. Mueller also is examining whether Trump has obstructed the sweeping inquiry.

McClatchy reported in April 2018 that Mueller had obtained evidence Cohen traveled to Prague from Germany in late August or early September of 2016, but it could not be learned how that information was gleaned.

Cohen has vehemently denied being in Prague, and so far Mueller hasn't mentioned Prague in any of his filings, "proof" according to the right that Cohen was never there and "proof" the entire Steele Dossier is a lie and that the Mueller probe should be ended.

But this story makes things somewhat less cut and dried.  Cloning a cell phone certainly isn't above the CIA (or our Russian friends) however if this is true, than yeah, this is kind of the smoking gun, and it would make sense that Mueller was going to sit on it until it was going to be used.

[UPDATE: McClatchy is not the only news outlet working on confirming Cohen's Prague trip.

Two sources tell me that at least one major news org (perhaps two) have confirmation of the Cohen/Prague trip and are working on reports.

— Scott Stedman (@ScottMStedman) December 27, 2018

Stay tuned.