The former lawyer of the US President said that Trump knew about the planned publication of WikiLeaks letters from Democrats in 2016

Michael Cohen, a former lawyer for US President Donald Trump, said during a congressional hearing that the American leader was aware of plans for WikiLeaks to publish an archive of letters from the US Democratic Party headquarters in 2016, reports The Washington Post .

Cohen said that a few days before the Democratic convention, he was in Trump's office, then political consultant Roger Stone called him, and the US president turned on the speakerphone. The ex-Trump lawyer said Stone was talking about a conversation with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. He, Cohen noted, said that within a few days, emails were supposed to be leaked, which would harm the campaign of Trump's rival in the presidential election, Hillary Clinton. Trump responded, according to his ex-defender, that "that would be great."

Recall that a case was initiated against Cohen in the spring of 2018 for financial crimes and perjury during a congressional hearing in the case of “Russian interference”. In April 2018, his personal office was searched, during which law enforcement officers seized tax documents and correspondence with some clients. Cohen was subsequently sentenced to three years in prison.

The Clinton campaign letters were leaked in July 2016. of hacking the servers of the US Democratic Party Russia has been accused . Cohen said on February 27 that he had no evidence of "Russian interference".

In the spring of 2018, the US Democratic National Committee filed a lawsuit in Manhattan District Court against the Russian government, the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks. The document said that during the campaign, the computer networks of the Democratic Party were hacked, the information found there was subsequently disseminated in order to harm the party's candidate Hillary Clinton.

The WikiLeaks resource was launched in 2006 and began to publish information received from anonymous sources or made available when it was leaked. The site's founder, Julian Assange, has been at the Ecuadorian embassy in London since 2012.

In January 2018, it became known that he received the citizenship of the country. In March, the Ecuadorian government removed Assange's means of communication with the outside world and the right to receive visitors. In October 2018, Assange stated that he was ready to leave the Ecuadorian embassy on the condition that he was not extradited "neither to the United States nor to third countries".