Members-Only Article
We’ve now had reports from The New York Times that Michael Cohen had three meetings with Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg in the weeks just before and after President Trump’s inauguration. This occurred the US investment affiliate of Vekselberg’s holding company, which is run by his cousin, was in the process of hiring Cohen as a $1 million per year consultant. We know all of this, or you do if you’ve read these articles. What I wanted to do is what amounts to a very low-tech visualization which puts this events in what I think is a much starker light. I’ve taken these events and others Cohen was involved in and overlaid them on other events and news reports that were happening in these same days tied to the Russia scandal and the investigation into the 2016 election interference campaign.
When you see the progression arranged in this way it shows how even as revelation upon revelation was emerging and Trump and all of his associates were vociferously denying any ties to Russia let alone collusion Cohen was proceeding along doing things that look very much like the accusations they were so aggressively denying.