Doc Holliday said:
So...the new narrative is that Trump Enterprises (run by Trump) wanted to build a luxury skyrise in Moscow, and told Putin they would like to "give" him the most expensive top floor apartment, valued at around $50mil. That way, more rich Russians would flock to the building and want to live there. Putin says "! (awesome!) Hell yeah, I wanna live there!" But the caveat is...Trump has to stay in the private sector and NOT become president in order to break ground on the project and seal the deal. Therefore...naturally, Putin interferes with our 2016 election to make SURE Trump wins the presidency, and the De-luxe Apartment in the Sky deal is scrapped with no chance of it getting done now. I'm no John LeCarre', but that's got to be the worst foreign collusion bribe transaction in history.
The offer itself is a per se violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, so it's literally the statutory definition of corruption. It also fits pretty neatly into the now obvious pattern we've seen repeated of Russians offering deals to those they have targeted to carry out Russian goals. And as much as you want to pretend otherwise, the offer and attempts to meet happenned against a backdrop of a bunch of
other shady meetings and contacts with Russians in 2016. Trump Org also wasn't just dealing with Russian businessmen on this deal, they were communicating with
Putin's right hand man (i.e. directly with Kremlin officials) the whole time...during a presidential campaign where the Russians hacked Trump's opponents.
Also notice in Cohen's guilty plea the presence of the phrase "took steps in furtherance of", that's notable because it's language commonly associated with conspiracy charges. Someone is guilty of conspiracy at the point one conspirator "takes steps in furtherance of" fulfilling the goal of a conspiracy, they don't actually have to finish the conspiracy to be charged just work towards its goal. I'd bet including that phrase is Mueller laying groundwork for future filings.