Michael Cohen admits he kept in 'regular contact' with White House while lying to Congress: report

According to a Friday  legal filing from the attorneys for Michael Cohen, the former personal attorney for President Donald Trump, their client admits he was in "regular contact" with the White House at the time he was making false statements to Congress.

According to Politico, the admission was included in a bid to get a more lenient jail sentence.

The report states "his false statement to Congress — which Cohen pleaded guilty to on Thursday — was based on Trump and his team’s efforts to 'portray contact with Russian representatives' by Trump, his campaign or his company 'as having effectively terminated before the Iowa caucuses of February 1, 2016,'" Politico reports.

“Seeking to stay in line with this message, Michael told Congress that his communications and efforts to finalize a building project in Moscow on behalf of the Trump Organization, which he began pursuing in 2015, had come to an end in January 2016, when a general inquiry he made to the Kremlin went unanswered,” Cohen’s lawyers Guy Petrillo and Amy Lester stated in their filing.

“He and [Trump] also discussed possible travel to Russia in the summer of 2016, and Michael took steps to clear dates for such travel," they continued, adding, that Cohen states he kept Trump “apprised” of his contacts with Russia during the campaign.

“Michael participated in seven voluntary interview meetings with the Special Counsel’s Office of the Department of Justice,” they also wrote. “He intends to continue to make himself available to the SCO as and when needed for additional questioning. He also agreed to plead guilty to an additional count, namely, making false statements to Congress, based in part on information that he voluntarily provided to the SCO in meetings governed by a limited-use immunity proffer agreement.”

You can read the whole report here.