According to a bombshell report from Vanity Fair‘s Emily Jane Fox, the primary lawyer for Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner, Abbe Lowell, may have a very good reason for his recent seemingly cooperative stance toward federal investigators: Lowell may be guilty of obstruction himself.
In the lead-up to the initial testimony that Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, gave to Congress — the testimony he was later convicted of lying in — it turns out that there was enough communication between the Cohen and Trump camps that Lowell had cause to both know what Cohen planned to testify about and to attempt to influence that testimony.
In fact, it was that specific part of Cohen’s sworn statements in his first Congressional appearance that the former “fixer” to Donald Trump apologized to Committee members for having lied about when he came back to testify again before House Oversight: The details of the Trump Tower Moscow real estate deal, how long it was in the works — during a time when Trump was saying on the campaign trail that he had “no deals in Russia” — and exactly who was involved in the planning and supervision of the building of the luxury condo tower in the heart of Russia’s capital.
So why was Abbe Lowell so concerned with what Cohen might tell congressional investigators, enough to tell Cohen to change his testimony?
The specific thing that Lowell asked Cohen to change is quite revealing. From the Vanity Fair piece, an email exchange between Cohen’s attorney and Lowell:
Abbe asks for us to affirmatively address in our statement on the 25th:
-[Ivanka] was not involved in the backs and forths with FS [Felix Sater] and MC [Michael Cohen]
-she did not know FS was involved in the possible project in that country
-she was not in any meetings or calls with people putting it together (esp. from that country)
-and maybe that, by then, MC knew she was at least skeptical about him.”
Although Lowell’s office declined to comment, I think everyone has figured out from watching non-stop court cases for the last 2 years that not commenting is an admission that it’s true. And how could they not admit it? There’s extensive documentation of former Russian mafia-linked “businessman” Felix Sater taking Ivanka on a tour of the storied city on the hunt for locations for buildings.
But in the latest testimony from Cohen, the convicted lawyer told Oversight that he had briefed Ivanka personally at least 10 times, which gives a lot of credence to this new revelation of coercion by Lowell. Why would Ivanka’s lawyer even need to TELL someone to specifically say his client wasn’t involved in something unless she very specifically was?
Featured image via screen capture
