Trump lawyer was paid to fix Poroshenko White House meeting, BBC reports

Donald Trump’s
personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, received a secret payment of at least USD 400K
to fix talks between the Ukrainian president and President Trump, the BBC
reported on May 23, citing sources in Kyiv close to those involved. The payment
was arranged by intermediaries acting for Ukraine’s leader, Petro Poroshenko,
the sources said, though Cohen was not registered as a representative of
Ukraine as required by U.S. law. The meeting at the White House was in June
2017. Shortly after Poroshenko returned home, his country’s anti-corruption
agency stopped its investigation into Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul
Manafort, BBC
reported. Cohen denied the allegation.

The Presidential
Administration of Ukraine rejected the claims of the BBC report about a payment
made for Poroshenko’s meeting with Trump as “blatant lies, slander and fake,”
according to a statement released the same day. Instead, the meeting was
organized exclusively through official diplomatic channels, particularly the
Ukrainian Embassy in the U.S., the statement said. “We believe the blatant
disinformation that was distributed is part of a fake campaign to discredit
Ukrainian-American relations, as well as personally attack the presidents of
Ukraine and the U.S.,” the statement said. “We demand a retraction of this
material since it ignored comments about the unreliability of this information
in the process of its preparation. If that doesn’t happen, we leave ourselves
the right to submit a complaint in court.”

Zenon Zawada: The
claims made in this BBC report are unlikely to be proven or disproven in court
and this scandal will evaporate from public consciousness in a few days. The
Presidential Administration played the accusation wisely, not distancing
Poroshenko from Trump but casting both of them as the joint targets of a smear
campaign, which should bolster their improved relations even further. Indeed
Poroshenko seems to have mended any possible damage done during the election
campaign (during which Ukrainians allegedly backed Hillary Clinton) as Trump
has provided ample support for Ukraine since then, particularly in increasing
sanctions against Russia and
providing a steady stream of defensive weapons.