WASHINGTON – The first domino was an eager Trump campaign operative who shared what sounded at the time like an idle boast that Russia had dirt on Hillary Clinton.
The conversation between George Papadopoulos, a largely unknown foreign policy adviser for Donald Trump’s then-fledgling bid for the White House, and an Australian diplomat took on significance only later, after the Democratic National Committee said Russian hackers had stolen troves of emails. It became the first inkling that “Americans might be working with the Russians,” former FBI Director James Comey would later tell a House committee.
Nearly three years later, the investigation launched from that single contact has taken down a half-dozen senior aides to President Donald Trump, including his campaign chairman Paul Manafort, national security adviser Michael Flynn and personal attorney Michael Cohen. And it has cascaded far beyond that, into Trump's campaign and private business.
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Now, as the White House braces for the imminent delivery of special counsel Robert Mueller's final report on the Russia investigation, Cohen has raised the prospect that virtually no one in Trump’s complicated political and business sphere may be safe from federal scrutiny.
In explosive testimony before a separate House committee on Wednesday, Trump’s former fixer – now a felon and government informant – described a web of federal investigations that have metastasized far beyond Russian interference in the 2016 election to include separate examinations of Trump’s business operations and the roles played by son Donald Trump Jr. and Trump Organization finance chief Allen Weisselberg.
And he accused the president of having participated in a criminal conspiracy.
Trump and his defenders attacked Cohen's credibility, saying there's little reason to trust someone who three months ago pleaded guilty to lying to Congress. But more than the accusations Cohen made in his sworn testimony, his descriptions of the breadth of subjects federal investigators are pursuing could have grave implications for Trump, his family and his business long after Mueller's team departs the scene.
Rudy Giuliani, the president's lead lead defense attorney, largely dismissed Cohen's testimony as the product of a "tainted witness" whose own convictions related to financial fraud, lying to Congress and campaign finance violations called his credibility into serious question.
"Look, this whole thing started with allegations of collusion with Russia," Giuliani told USA TODAY. "They haven't proved that. All the rest are process crimes that don't involve the president."
While Cohen drew fresh attention during his congressional testimony to hush-money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels, he indicated that Manhattan prosecutors were continuing to review the involvement of Trump Jr. and Weisselberg in that plan to conceal an alleged affair with Trump. The Trump Inaugural Committee also is in the sights of prosecutors in New York, having recently acknowledged receipt of a subpoena seeking information related to possible fundraising irregularities.
And late into Cohen's marathon House testimony Wednesday, after the the former Trump attorney offered a searing account of his dealings with the president, he dropped another stunner in a matter-of-fact exchange with Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill.
"Is there any other wrongdoing or illegal act that you are aware of regarding Donald Trump that we haven't yet discussed today?" Krishnamoorthi asked.
"Yes," Cohen responded, declining to elaborate because the issue is "currently being looked at by the Southern District of New York," a reference to federal prosecutors in Manhattan.
The investigation of Russian election interference snowballed into a probe by special counsel Robert Mueller that has so far produced charges against 34 people and three companies.
Among those have been a dozen Russian intelligence officials accused of hacking Democratic political organizations and a handful of onetime top aides to Trump, including former campaign chairman Manafort, his deputy Rick Gates, former national security adviser Flynn, longtime adviser Roger Stone and Cohen.
Mueller’s office has revealed details of Russian efforts to use stolen emails and illicit social media campaigns to help Trump win the White House and a campaign eager to benefit from that activity, but so far prosecutors have alleged no connection between the two.
Cohen told lawmakers that he could not provide one.
"Questions have been raised about whether I know of direct evidence that Mr. Trump or his campaign colluded with Russia," Cohen said. "I do not. I want to be clear. But, I have my suspicions."
At least some of those suspicions, according to Cohen, were driven by Trump's interest in how the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks could help his campaign. He said Trump knew in advance that WikiLeaks was planning to release a batch of damaging stolen emails about Hillary Clinton shortly before the convention at which she was to receive the Democratic presidential nomination.
Cohen said he was with Trump when Stone, on a speakerphone in Trump’s office, told the candidate he had spoken to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and that “within a couple of days there would be a massive dump of emails that would damage Hillary Clinton's campaign.”
Cohen testified that the conversation happened on July 18 or 19, shortly after federal prosecutors say WikiLeaks obtained stolen emails from an online persona that was a front for the Russian intelligence service that had carried out the hacks. WikiLeaks replied that it would release them “this week,” prosecutors alleged in an indictment.
WikiLeaks said in a statement that Assange had never spoken with Stone, though prosecutors have told a judge that they obtained communications between Stone and the organization.
Cohen said he did not know what emails WikiLeaks planned to release. A week earlier, Assange had said publicly that WikiLeaks planned to reveal additional emails from the private server Clinton maintained while she was secretary of state. Instead, days after the conversation Cohen described, WikiLeaks disclosed thousands of emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee.
That same day, prosecutors allege, an unnamed senior member of Trump’s campaign was “directed” to get in touch with Stone about “additional releases” of Stolen emails, and that Stone later “told the Trump campaign about future releases of damaging material.”
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