NYT interview on Russia:
TRUMP: So let me tell you about about Trump Tower Moscow. This was a very unimportant deal. This was a very unimportant deal. No. 1. No. 2, this was a deal, the only thing you heard is through Rudy [Giuliani]. Is that what you heard? Through Rudy?
BAKER: More recently we heard through Rudy, he quotes you.
TRUMP: Rudy was incorrect. No. 1, he was incorrect, and we’ve explained that, he was wrong. Rudy has been wrong. A little bit. But what has happened is this. I didn’t care. That deal was not important. It was essentially a letter of intent or an option. I’m not even sure that they had a site. And if you look at where that was sent to, that was a Michael Cohen thing. If you look, I always say, Why don’t you bring this up, to Jay Sekulow, good guy. I think it was sent to almost like a public address for Moscow. If you take a look at it. Take a good solid look. The original letter or something was sent. They didn’t even have anybody to send it to. But that deal is just like other deals. I was doing other deals. I was running for president, but I was also running a business.
BAKER: How late do you remember having any conversations about it in 2016? What was the latest that you remember?
TRUMP: I would say it was early to middle of the year. Now, I don’t know that Cohen didn’t go a little bit longer than that. I don’t think it would be much longer. But then he could have come back to me and said, “Listen, I put it together.” Because that stuff happens. You know, you think a deal — I was running for president, I was doing really well. The last thing I cared about was building a building.
BAKER: But you told people that you didn’t have any business there. People might have misunderstood.
TRUMP: That wasn’t business. Peter, that wasn’t business.
BAKER: Isn’t that misleading to say you weren’t pursuing business there, right?
[Crosstalk]
TRUMP: I had no money invested. It was a letter of intent, or option. It was a free option. It was a nothing. And I wasn’t doing anything. I don’t consider that even business. And frankly, that wasn’t even on my radar. If you take a look at that, take a look at the deal. There was no money put up. There was no transfer. I don’t think they had a location. I’m not even sure if they had a location.
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BAKER: Clearly there was a hope of having money. That was the reason you were pursuing it, right?
TRUMP: My point is this — It was a free option to look at a deal, to look at deals. That was not like, “I’m going to buy a property in Moscow. I’m going to do — or I’m building a building in Moscow.” Now, I would have had every right to do a deal. That’s what I did. That’s what I did.
Rudy was wrong in that he went — I think what Rudy was looking at, I think, was that in the statement I made to the Mueller group, we talked about during that period of a year, up until the election, we talked about that. So he may have been referring to that.
But the way I view it is early in the year to middle of the year, no interest. I had very little interest in the first place, and again, I viewed it as a free option. It may have been a letter of intent. I don’t know exactly what it was called. But it was unimportant. And you know what was very important to me? Running for president. And doing well. But I was running a business. I mean, I would have been allowed to build 20 buildings. I was doing other things. I was doing a lot of other things. I was running a business. Because as you would know, there weren’t a lot of people at the time that thought I was going to win. So I don’t want to give up a year and a half of my life, not do anything, run for president, then have to go back and say, you know, “I could have kept running my business.”
Very interestingly, you know, George Washington ran his business. You can, I guess, you can go long beyond the election, if you wanted to. You know. But I didn’t do that.
BAKER: But there’s a difference between running a domestic business and being possibly in business with Russian figures at the same time, right? You can imagine why people might find that concerning?
TRUMP: I have nothing. All I did was be a good candidate. Russia didn’t help me. Russia did not help me. There was no collusion. There was none of that. I was a good candidate. I did a good job. I won’t say whether she was a good candidate or not. I mean, the primary collusion was Hillary Clinton. If you take a look, Peter. I mean, look at that phony dossier. Some of that money, they say, went to Russia. [Tony] Podesta was involved with Russia. You look at the kind of relationships they had. They had real relationships with Russia. I had a potential, a deal that frankly wasn’t even a deal. It was literally — I viewed it as an option. But maybe it was called a letter of intent. Something like that.