BREAKING: Buzzfeed has a bigger story than it realizes—if Cohen told a friend he was going to Moscow right before the Republican National Convention, it confirms that his Italy "vacation" was a sham and he went to Prague or Moscow. His alibi in Capri has *already* fallen through.
2/ Here is the article, which would have 100% more scoops in it if its authors had talked to someone with Trump-Russia timeline expertise before publishing. google.com/amp/s/www.buzz…
3/ Cohen's statements on how he briefed Trump on the 2015 Trump Tower Moscow deal are already discredited. So we must go with what Sater says and assume Trump was getting periodic updates into summer '16. Which means he was actively hiding Russia connections from American voters.
4/ But Buzzfeed has some great scoops. FBI agents saying Cohen was in touch with Russian actors involved in election interference? That's yet another confirmation of a key Steele Dossier claim. It also suggests the '15 deal may have been a front for Russian election coordination.
5/ My thread from many months ago about Felix Sater likely cooperating with the FBI on Trump-Russia was based on Sater's own statements to friends and family that he was about to become internationally infamous and would likely go to prison over things he did relating to Trump.
6/ Here's the main scoop here: Cohen is a Big Fish, not the small fry we thought. He may not simply be a means to get to Trump; he may be one of the *primary* co-conspirators in Trump-Russia coordination.
7/ But there's another, I think equally big scoop: the chances Mueller has Sater in his pocket, and therefore (unbeknownst to him, yet) Cohen, and therefore Trump, are higher than we could have previously imagined. Sater looks to be a willing cooperator who is as yet unindicted.
