Improbable, but not impossible, that Michael Cohen went to Prague – Washington Examiner

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Prague is lovely in the late summer. The twilight creates silhouettes out of the hundreds of spires weaving throughout the city until 9 p.m. or so, and chances are that the sky is brightening again when you stumble out of some dance club off of the Vltava. With the tipsy Czech lining the winding streets at all hours of the humid days, Prague lets you lose yourself to anonymity. But as Franz Kafka knew a century ago, “Prague never lets you go.”

So I’m inclined not to believe the latest McClatchy D.C. report claiming, yet again, that President Trump’s since-fired fixer and grifter of a personal attorney spent two summers ago meeting with Kremlin officials in the Czech capital. For perhaps the first time ever, I believe Cohen when he tweeted, “I hear #Prague #CzechRepublic is beautiful in the summertime. I wouldn’t know as I have never been. #Mueller knows everything!”

The infamous Christopher Steele dossier, whose author estimates of which 70 to 90 is accurate, originally charged Cohen with spending “August/September 2016” in Prague. The McClatchy report, if true, would eviscerate a key defense from the Trump camp against accusations of Russian collusion.

Despite the #Resistance hype built around the latest report, as it stands, only anonymous sources have backed up McClatchy’s assertions, relayed in two stories over the course of eight months. Not one other journalist or news organization has corroborated the Cohen story, nor has anyone even hinted that they are close on the trail.

That said, Cohen still hasn’t provided the public any definitive evidence exonerating him from the charge. He posted a photo of his unopened passport on Twitter shortly after BuzzFeed released the dossier, and the Atlantic confirmed that he was in fact in Los Angeles for a week in August. Because the Czech Republic belongs to the EU’s Schengen Area, a group of member countries which have effectively abolished border control, even the complete publication of Cohen’s passport wouldn’t provide a full defense (Cohen could have easily flown from the U.S. to Paris and then taken the train to Prague, leaving him only with a French stamp in his passport, not a Czech one).

But at this point, Mueller likely does know everything, at least as it pertains to Cohen. If Mueller was capable of strong-arming Cohen into a guilty plea for lying about the infamous Trump Tower meeting, it seems highly unlikely that Cohen would have persisted in a lie about the Prague trip, which would presumably leave a much clearer paper trail.

As with all things Trump-related, no verdicts are certain, and the public should continue to be open to new evidence. But as it stands, the Prague hypothesis consists of anonymous sources, conjecture, and nothing else.

Source Article from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/improbable-but-not-impossible-that-michael-cohen-went-to-prague

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