Trump says he only 'lightly looked' at Russia project as Mueller probe closes in on him

WASHINTON: Identified as ''Individual 1'' in his former personal lawyer Michael Cohen’s guilty plea before the Mueller probe, US President Donald Trump is fighting to overcome mounting evidence that contrary to assertions, he was doing business with Russia well into his Presidential campaign in 2016.

Among more explosive new disclosures amid commentaries forecasting the demise of his Presidency: A broker was pitching the Trump Organization to give Russian President Vladimir Putin a $50 million penthouse in a proposed Trump Tower Moscow in an effort to entice Russian oligarchs to buy other units in it.

President Trump is raging against the allegations with qualified denials that appear to put him in further legal jeopardy, even as the domestic crisis is overshadowing his presence at the G-20 summit in Buenos Aires, where he is scheduled to meet leaders of China, Japan, and India, among others.

Primarily, Trump is arguing that the project was only at a conceptual stage and never got off the ground.

''Oh, I get it! I am a very good developer, happily living my life, when I see our Country going in the wrong direction (to put it mildly). Against all odds, I decide to run for President & continue to run my business-very legal & very cool, talked about it on the campaign trail ...Lightly looked at doing a building somewhere in Russia. Put up zero money, zero guarantees and didn’t do the project,'' he tweeted from Buenos Aires, ending with the familiar charge of ''Witch Hunt!''



But critics bore down on the President, arguing that he was canoodling with Russians well into his Presidential campaign, and that, along with the subsequent cover-up of continued business dalliance with Moscow, compromised him and rendered his Presidency untenable.

Trump's troubles arise partly from the fact that he has said different things at different times about his business dealings with Russia. At numerous in presidential debates and media interviews during the campaign, he denied any business involvement in Russia (''I’m all over the world but we’re not involved in Russia,'' he said in one 2016 interview). He now admits to ''lightly looking'' at building in Russia even as there are tweets from 2013 announcing a Trump Tower Moscow, a project he was seen to be obsessed about.

Several legal mavens suggested the latest developments, including his tendency to be economical with the truth, could mark the demise of the Presidency, although political pundits argued that it would all depend on whether Republican Party stalwarts summoned the nerve to challenge him.

''Today is the first day I thought Donald Trump might not finish his term in office,''' CNN legal analyst Jeff Toobin said, while former Solicitor General Neal Katyal saw the development as “the beginning of the end for Trump.'' On Twitter, critics eviscerated him. ''Tweeting about light collusion at 4 am seems...healthy,'' sneered Asha Rangappa, a former FBI Special Agent and a trenchant Trump critic.

However, Trump has been written off before only to emerge – scathed but surviving because of the groundswell of support he gets from Middle America, which cares more about the economy, jobs, and security than Trump personal foibles. At the G20, the US President carried on with his agenda, including signing a new trade deal with Canada and Mexico to replace NAFTA, which he had repeatedly described as a disaster for the United States.

But his relentless tirade against the Mueller probe over the past week, carrying into Buenos Aires, indicates that it remains on top of his mind even as adversaries waited for the next bombshell. ''The iceberg of lies, deceit, corruption, & criminality is steadily but surely surfacing, despite the efforts of many in high places to keep it submerged. How large is the iceberg & who will be found clinging to it? The wheels of justice turn slowly, but grind exceedingly fine,'' tweeted former CIA director John Brennan, one of his major critics.