McClatchy sources say Michael Cohen’s cell signal appeared briefly near Prague in summer 2016, reviving discussion of a central element of the Steele dossier (an element which had looked like all but a dead letter since Cohen’s SCO plea a month ago) mcclatchydc.com/news/investiga…
A pretty strong source of skepticism: The SCO made Cohen plead guilty to lying to Congress about the timing of Trump Tower Moscow talks. Cohen also told Congress under oath that he had not made this trip to Prague, but he hasn’t been required to plead guilty to lying about that.
otoh, it’s my view that a close reading of the SCO’s guilty plea documents shows the SCO has in other cases deliberately withheld some details of matters “core to its investigation” (to borrow a phrase) from guilty plea docs.
e.g., we can read the complete story of Papadopoulos trying to arrange a Trump - Putin meeting in his ‘statement of the offense,’ but the story of Papadopoulos’s knowledge that Russia had Clinton’s emails is obviously incomplete, abruptly ending when he learns it from Mifsud.
So I don’t think the absence of these matters from the SCO proceedings is dispositive, but it’d still be so strange to have Cohen go to sentencing keeping this secret and allowing a big lie before congress to stand. imho we should still treat this story with heavy skepticism.
