The other day, a White House reporter asked the president why, if Michael Cohen was, as President Trump put it, “a weak person and a not too smart person,” then why had he hired him? “Because a long time ago, he did me a favor,” Mr. Trump replied.
Mr. Trump didn’t say what the favor entailed, but a pair of Mr. Cohen’s sentencing memos released by federal prosecutors late last week reveal that the door to Mr. Trump’s office opened in 2007. The condo board at Trump World Tower in Manhattan, where Mr. Cohen lived, tried to remove the Trump name from the building. Mr. Cohen intervened, got the entire board thrown out, and was soon earning a $500,000 salary at Trump Tower.
One of the keys to success in Mr. Trump’s life has been collecting deposits in a bank of favors. “Do me a favor” is one of his favorite lines, with the promise of good things to follow. For some, the good things never materialize. But failure to play this game can land you a spot on Mr. Trump’s enemies list. For example, Mr. Trump nursed a long-held grudge against Mario Cuomo, because the former New York governor failed to grant him an unspecified “perfectly legal and appropriate favor.”
The problem for Mr. Trump is that he is unable or unwilling to spot the difference between a favor and a crooked scheme. And that goes a long way toward explaining why he has surrounded himself with people in trouble with the law and why his presidency is in the grip of intensifying federal investigations.
Mr. Cohen knew Mr. Trump liked favors: Before he walked through the door at Trump Tower, he had already done his future boss another favor. Mr. Cohen, his family and a former business partner invested more than $17 million in Trump properties in the 2000s. Back then, when Mr. Cohen and his money were assets to be courted, Mr. Trump took a more sanguine view of him. “Michael Cohen has a great insight into the real-estate market,” Mr. Trump told The New York Post, adding, “in short, he’s a very smart person.”
Two former federal officials told me (though Mr. Cohen denied this) that information they collected from Russian sources indicated that Mr. Cohen had been hired by Mr. Trump as a favor to Mr. Cohen’s father-in-law, Fima Shusterman, a Ukrainian émigré who has a 1993 conviction for a crime related to money laundering.
Mr. Shusterman, who owned at least four New York taxi companies, set his son-in-law up in the yellow cab business. In the Southern District sentencing memo, prosecutors said that Mr. Cohen turned that into a very lucrative business. It’s telling that prosecutors in Manhattan did not sign a cooperation agreement with Mr. Cohen in part because he specifically refused to answer questions about past criminal conduct.
President Trump himself made a cryptic reference to Mr. Shusterman’s ties to unknown sources of wealth when he wrote on Twitter, after Mr. Cohen’s guilty plea to charges of lying to Congress, that his former lawyer “makes up stories to get a great and already reduced deal for himself, and get his wife and father-in-law (who has the money?) off Scott Free.”
Russians have long been doing favors for Mr. Trump. In the 1980s, a Russian criminal named David Bogatin bought five Trump Tower apartments with $6 million in laundered funds. In the 1990s, the Russian Mafia favored the Atlantic City Taj Mahal, in part, because of the casino’s lax money laundering controls. The Trump SoHo in Lower Manhattan, unveiled in 2006 on Mr. Trump’s reality TV show, “The Apprentice,” was reportedly developed with the help of an alleged gangster from the former Soviet Union.
Another favor, one involving Russia, is what landed Mr. Cohen at the center of Robert Mueller’s investigation. As Mr. Cohen knew, Mr. Trump had long sought — going back to the mid-1980s — to put his name on a building in Moscow. It’s no coincidence that the deal for Trump’s long-denied Moscow tower started to come together after he announced his run for the White House.
Mr. Mueller’s sentencing memorandum notes that in November 2015, Mr. Cohen was approached by a Russian who claimed to be a “trusted person” who offered the campaign “political synergy” with Russia and repeatedly proposed a meeting between Mr. Trump and Vladimir Putin. Such a meeting, Mr. Cohen was told, would have a “phenomenal” impact “not only in political but in a business dimension as well.” Mr. Cohen passed because he was working with his old friend — and a business associate of Mr. Trump’s — Felix Sater, a Russian immigrant and convicted felon (he pleaded guilty in a stock-manipulation scheme) with deep ties to Russia.
The two old friends sought to put together a deal for a Moscow tower that would reportedly have included a $50 million penthouse set aside for Russia’s president. The involvement of Russian government officials in the project suggests the Kremlin had a notion that the tower was the shiny bauble that Russia could use to draw Mr. Trump into a compromising position.
Mr. Putin, a former K.G.B. lieutenant colonel skilled in the art of manipulation, certainly seems to understand that Mr. Trump’s world runs on favors. After all, the Russian president did Mr. Trump the biggest favor of them all. Mr. Putin turned his intelligence services into a virtual extension of the Trump campaign, hacking emails out the Democratic Party’s computer networks. That, together with the finely tuned, voluminous social messaging pumped out by internet trolls in St. Petersburg, Russia, may have tipped the scales in a close election.
President Trump, too, has done Mr. Putin many favors. He has questioned the value of the NATO alliance. He has hardly uttered a word critical of Mr. Putin. His administration has repeatedly delayed the imposition of tough sanctions on the aluminum tycoon Oleg Deripaska, as it did again last week. Most important, Mr. Trump has done nothing to stop Russia from wreaking havoc on American elections, as members of his own administration have made clear in recent days.
This gets to the very heart of Mr. Mueller’s investigation. What else is collusion but an exchange of favors? The question is whether this exchange of favors involves more than Mr. Trump’s natural inclination toward the authoritarian Russian ruler. By providing what prosecutors described as useful information on Russia-related matters he learned from Trump Organization executives, Mr. Cohen, a man who once said he would take a bullet for Mr. Trump, is turning favors into betrayal to help investigators understand exactly what his boss promised Russia in return.
Seth Hettena, a former investigative reporter for The Associated Press, is the author of “Trump/Russia: A Definitive History.”
Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.
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Home » Analysis & Comment » Opinion | The Dangers of Doing Favors for Donald Trump
Opinion | The Dangers of Doing Favors for Donald Trump
The other day, a White House reporter asked the president why, if Michael Cohen was, as President Trump put it, “a weak person and a not too smart person,” then why had he hired him? “Because a long time ago, he did me a favor,” Mr. Trump replied.
Mr. Trump didn’t say what the favor entailed, but a pair of Mr. Cohen’s sentencing memos released by federal prosecutors late last week reveal that the door to Mr. Trump’s office opened in 2007. The condo board at Trump World Tower in Manhattan, where Mr. Cohen lived, tried to remove the Trump name from the building. Mr. Cohen intervened, got the entire board thrown out, and was soon earning a $500,000 salary at Trump Tower.
One of the keys to success in Mr. Trump’s life has been collecting deposits in a bank of favors. “Do me a favor” is one of his favorite lines, with the promise of good things to follow. For some, the good things never materialize. But failure to play this game can land you a spot on Mr. Trump’s enemies list. For example, Mr. Trump nursed a long-held grudge against Mario Cuomo, because the former New York governor failed to grant him an unspecified “perfectly legal and appropriate favor.”
The problem for Mr. Trump is that he is unable or unwilling to spot the difference between a favor and a crooked scheme. And that goes a long way toward explaining why he has surrounded himself with people in trouble with the law and why his presidency is in the grip of intensifying federal investigations.
Mr. Cohen knew Mr. Trump liked favors: Before he walked through the door at Trump Tower, he had already done his future boss another favor. Mr. Cohen, his family and a former business partner invested more than $17 million in Trump properties in the 2000s. Back then, when Mr. Cohen and his money were assets to be courted, Mr. Trump took a more sanguine view of him. “Michael Cohen has a great insight into the real-estate market,” Mr. Trump told The New York Post, adding, “in short, he’s a very smart person.”
Two former federal officials told me (though Mr. Cohen denied this) that information they collected from Russian sources indicated that Mr. Cohen had been hired by Mr. Trump as a favor to Mr. Cohen’s father-in-law, Fima Shusterman, a Ukrainian émigré who has a 1993 conviction for a crime related to money laundering.
Mr. Shusterman, who owned at least four New York taxi companies, set his son-in-law up in the yellow cab business. In the Southern District sentencing memo, prosecutors said that Mr. Cohen turned that into a very lucrative business. It’s telling that prosecutors in Manhattan did not sign a cooperation agreement with Mr. Cohen in part because he specifically refused to answer questions about past criminal conduct.
President Trump himself made a cryptic reference to Mr. Shusterman’s ties to unknown sources of wealth when he wrote on Twitter, after Mr. Cohen’s guilty plea to charges of lying to Congress, that his former lawyer “makes up stories to get a great and already reduced deal for himself, and get his wife and father-in-law (who has the money?) off Scott Free.”
Russians have long been doing favors for Mr. Trump. In the 1980s, a Russian criminal named David Bogatin bought five Trump Tower apartments with $6 million in laundered funds. In the 1990s, the Russian Mafia favored the Atlantic City Taj Mahal, in part, because of the casino’s lax money laundering controls. The Trump SoHo in Lower Manhattan, unveiled in 2006 on Mr. Trump’s reality TV show, “The Apprentice,” was reportedly developed with the help of an alleged gangster from the former Soviet Union.
Another favor, one involving Russia, is what landed Mr. Cohen at the center of Robert Mueller’s investigation. As Mr. Cohen knew, Mr. Trump had long sought — going back to the mid-1980s — to put his name on a building in Moscow. It’s no coincidence that the deal for Trump’s long-denied Moscow tower started to come together after he announced his run for the White House.
Mr. Mueller’s sentencing memorandum notes that in November 2015, Mr. Cohen was approached by a Russian who claimed to be a “trusted person” who offered the campaign “political synergy” with Russia and repeatedly proposed a meeting between Mr. Trump and Vladimir Putin. Such a meeting, Mr. Cohen was told, would have a “phenomenal” impact “not only in political but in a business dimension as well.” Mr. Cohen passed because he was working with his old friend — and a business associate of Mr. Trump’s — Felix Sater, a Russian immigrant and convicted felon (he pleaded guilty in a stock-manipulation scheme) with deep ties to Russia.
The two old friends sought to put together a deal for a Moscow tower that would reportedly have included a $50 million penthouse set aside for Russia’s president. The involvement of Russian government officials in the project suggests the Kremlin had a notion that the tower was the shiny bauble that Russia could use to draw Mr. Trump into a compromising position.
Mr. Putin, a former K.G.B. lieutenant colonel skilled in the art of manipulation, certainly seems to understand that Mr. Trump’s world runs on favors. After all, the Russian president did Mr. Trump the biggest favor of them all. Mr. Putin turned his intelligence services into a virtual extension of the Trump campaign, hacking emails out the Democratic Party’s computer networks. That, together with the finely tuned, voluminous social messaging pumped out by internet trolls in St. Petersburg, Russia, may have tipped the scales in a close election.
President Trump, too, has done Mr. Putin many favors. He has questioned the value of the NATO alliance. He has hardly uttered a word critical of Mr. Putin. His administration has repeatedly delayed the imposition of tough sanctions on the aluminum tycoon Oleg Deripaska, as it did again last week. Most important, Mr. Trump has done nothing to stop Russia from wreaking havoc on American elections, as members of his own administration have made clear in recent days.
This gets to the very heart of Mr. Mueller’s investigation. What else is collusion but an exchange of favors? The question is whether this exchange of favors involves more than Mr. Trump’s natural inclination toward the authoritarian Russian ruler. By providing what prosecutors described as useful information on Russia-related matters he learned from Trump Organization executives, Mr. Cohen, a man who once said he would take a bullet for Mr. Trump, is turning favors into betrayal to help investigators understand exactly what his boss promised Russia in return.
Seth Hettena, a former investigative reporter for The Associated Press, is the author of “Trump/Russia: A Definitive History.”
Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.
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