The shift in Democrats’ Russia strategy that Trump did not anticipate

Michael Cohen’s lawyers issued a filing late last week, in connection with his second guilty plea and pending sentencing, that indicates he has information and/or evidence that Russia has compromising information on Donald J. Trump and his “Trump Tower Moscow” scheming during the campaign. And it’s clear that Trump and his inept handlers had no idea that Democrats are shifting their focus and messaging strategy:

The House Democrats preparing to lead their own Russia probes appear to be turning their attention from possible collusion between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russian intelligence to potential Russian leverage over the president. The turning point came last week when Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal lawyer and fixer, pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about the Trump Organization’s dealings in Russia during the election.

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Democrats say Trump’s misleading statements about his business connections to Russia gave Putin’s regime compromising material, or kompromat.

“They knew that he had major business dealings, or that Cohen, on his behalf, had major business dealings in Moscow during the campaign, and that he was lying about that. There may be other things that they know that give them leverage,” Representative Jerry Nadler, the New York Democrat soon to take over the House Judiciary Committee, said Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press. He argued that “the fact that he was lying to the American people about doing business in Russia and that the Kremlin knew he was lying gave the Kremlin a hold over him. And one question we have now is, Does the Kremlin still have hold over him, because of other lies that they know about?”

The full Atlantic article has more details. Go read!