NEW YORK – U.S. President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen on Saturday denied a media report that the special counsel investigating alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election has evidence Cohen visited Prague that year.
Citing unidentified sources, McClatchy said on Friday that investigators for Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is also probing possible collusion between Moscow and the Trump campaign, had proof Cohen entered the Czech Republic through Germany.
McClatchy said in its report that confirmation of the trip would lend credence to a dossier compiled by a former British intelligence agent that alleged Cohen met in Prague with a prominent ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Russia has denied interfering in the election and Trump has said there was no collusion. Cohen has denied ever visiting the Czech capital.
“Bad reporting, bad information and bad story,” Cohen wrote on Twitter, with a link to the news agency’s report. “No matter how many times or ways they write it, I have never been to Prague. I was in LA with my son. Proven!”
Cohen is due to appear in federal court on Monday in connection with a raid last week on his New York office and home by agents with the FBI that was based in part on a referral from Mueller.
They were seeking information on a $130,000 payment made by Cohen just before the 2016 election to porn star Stormy Daniels, who has said she had sex with Trump in 2006, a person familiar with the matter said. Trump has said he did not know about the payment.