"Evidence that then-presidential candidate Donald Trump was pursuing a lucrative business deal with Russia and that his personal attorney, Michael Cohen, emailed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s personal spokesman to intervene raises the stakes in Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation substantially. The Post reports:
Cohen’s email to [Dmitry] Peskov provides an example of a Trump business official directly seeking Kremlin assistance in advancing Trump’s business interests. … Cohen said he discussed the deal three times with Trump and that Trump signed a letter of intent with the company on Oct. 28, 2015. He said the Trump company began to solicit designs from architects and discuss financing.
Ethics expert Norman Eisen warns: “Now we have a second group of emails from those in Trump’s orbit suggesting high-level outreach to Russia in and around the election season. Like the now-famous email exchange with Don Jr. about Russia’s ‘support for Mr. Trump,’ these new documents promising that ‘Putin’s team’ will ‘buy in’ on Trump raise the question of what the president knew of all this and when he knew it.” He tells me, “The emails add important additional evidence to the special counsel’s investigation, both as to possible collusion and as to obstruction of justice, inasmuch as they deepen the suspicion of a possible malign Trump motive for attempting to block the Russia investigation.”
Now, Cohen insists to The Post that the Trump Tower Moscow proposal was “not related in any way to Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign.” But of course, we don’t know that and neither does he. Mueller, however, will be looking for evidence, as Eisen puts it, “that Trump or his agents actually agreed to better treatment for Putin and Russia in exchange for a present or future Trump Tower Moscow.” That would, he says, “go beyond collusion to outright corruption.” But even without a smoking gun showing a quid pro quo, the extent to which Trump was compromised — and may remain so — should concern Congress and the voters." J. Rubin at the Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...=.d0d0a3f36f03
Another good one from 'The Right Turn' at the Washington Post. Well worth reading.