Quote:August 31, 2017

The lawyer for a close ally of President Donald Trump fought back against some of the most explosive allegations included in a Russia dossier and argued that congressional investigators should be searching for the donors who paid for it.

In a detailed letter sent to members of the House intelligence committee earlier this month, Stephen Ryan, who represents Michael Cohen, a former Trump Organization executive who is now the President's personal attorney, said the dossier's allegations were unfounded.

The 35-page dossier, compiled by a former British intelligence officer working with a former investigative reporter, explicitly accuses Cohen of being a key link between the Russian government and the Trump campaign -- a charge he has repeatedly and flatly denied.

"We have not uncovered a single document that would in any way corroborate the Dossier's allegations regarding Mr. Cohen, nor do we believe that any such document exists," Ryan wrote to Reps. Michael Conaway and Adam Schiff, the leaders of the House Russia probe, according to a copy of the letter obtained by CNN.

Ryan goes on to say that House investigators should "discern and publicly disclose the entity or entities that paid for the 35-page dossier."

The New York Times first reported Cohen's rebuttal.

In particular, the dossier includes an allegation that Cohen traveled to Prague last August to meet with Russian officials as part of an alleged effort to maintain an operation between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.

"Mr. Cohen has never traveled to Prague, Czech Republic, as evidenced by his US passport. He did not participate in meetings of any kind with Kremlin officials in Prague in August 2016," Ryan wrote in his letter to the committee.

The dossier alleged that Cohen went to Prague in late August 2016 or possibly early September to meet Russian officials. Cohen has pushed back on these still-unsubstantiated claims, saying that he was in California at the time. Earlier this year, he told The Atlantic he was in California from August 23 to 29, visiting the University of Southern California with his son.

Officials at USC confirmed to The Atlantic that Cohen was on campus during that timeframe. However, Cohen's own geotagged tweets place him in New Jersey, on August 24 -- even though Cohen said his trip started on August 23. (Cohen later suggested he was in New Jersey to catch his flight to Los Angeles, tweeting, "you are aware that there is an airport in Newark?")

https://edition.cnn.com/2017/08/31/polit...index.html