WASHINGTON – In a surprise appearance before a federal judge in New York Thursday, ex-Trump attorney Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about a Trump real estate project in Moscow.
President Donald Trump, in turn, hit back against his former lawyer, saying that Cohen is a "weak person" who is "lying about a project that everybody knew about" in an effort to get a reduced sentence.
Cohen's guilty plea comes just over a year after his closed-door testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee.
That's when Cohen issued a statement to the media, saying, "The rejected proposal to build a Trump property in Moscow…was terminated in January of 2016, which occurred before the Iowa caucus and months before the first primary."
On Thursday, the president said he decided not to go forward with the Trump Tower project because of his presidential campaign.
Nevertheless, he added, "There would be nothing wrong if I did do it. I was running my business while I was campaigning. There was a good chance that I wouldn't have won. In which case, I would have gone back into the business – and why should I lose lots of opportunities?"
All this comes on the same day the president took to Twitter to call the Russia investigation an "illegal Joseph McCarthy style Witch Hunt."
"After wasting more than $40,000,000, it has proven only one thing – there was NO Collusion with Russia," Trump charged.
CBN News spoke this morning with former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and former deputy campaign manager Dave Bossie, who both say they couldn't agree more.
The two men have co-authored a new book, titled Trump's Enemies, which is critical of the Russia probe.
"Michael has his own legal issues that he's created that have nothing to do with the outcome of the election – they had nothing to do with some type of fake Russian collusion story," Lewandowski said.
Meanwhile, special counsel Robert Mueller is accusing former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort of failing to uphold his part of the plea deal in the Russia investigation.
The allegation could expose Manafort to a lengthier prison sentence and possibly additional criminal charges – including the 10 felony counts that were dropped when he entered into the agreement.
CBN News asked Lewandowski and Bossie if Trump should pardon Manafort.
"Every president has it under their purview to issue pardons," Lewandowski replied. "To say I will not, under no circumstances, pardon somebody I think is doing a disservice to one of the powers that he has."
Bossie agreed, saying, "It would be unfair to anyone for a President to just dismiss it before an application process."
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