Michael Cohen is causing all sorts of trouble for himself lately, but some of his biggest issues are less paparazzi red meat and more big-picture collusion.

Huge: the McClatchy story from this weekend supports a central thesis in the Steele dossier: Cohen was in Prague in the summer of 2016 to meet with a Putin ally.

• Special Counsel Robert Mueller reportedly has evidence that Cohen “secretly made a late-summer trip to Prague” in 2016.
• Investigators “traced evidence that Cohen entered the Czech Republic through Germany, apparently during August or early September of 2016.”
• This lines up directly with a claim in the Steele dossier, which contains four successive different reports alleging that Cohen played a role in covering up collusion with Russia during the 2016 election.
  • The dates in the dossier match perfectly with the dates reported by McClatchy, and the progression of the reports within the dossier point to Steele’s sources becoming more and more accurate.
  • The behavior described in the dossier also parallels Cohen’s “fixer” role in his other hush-money endeavors.

Cohen’s other client, Elliott Broidy, is also mixed up in foreign influence.

• While the latest headlines are about Cohen negotiating a $1.6 million payment to a former Playboy model, Broidy also has a history of influence peddling in international affairs.
• Broidy reportedly worked with George Nader to advocate for removing Rex Tillerson from his post as Secretary of State, “backing confrontational approaches to Iran and Qatar” and pushing for Trump to meet “privately” with the leader of the U.A.E.

Another Cohen lie: Trump Tower Moscow.

• Although both Sater and Cohen previously claimed they stopped working on Trump Tower Moscow in January 2016, new BuzzFeed reporting says “Sater hoped to push the deal forward by attending the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum with Cohen in June 2016,” and that Sater stopped work on the project only after Trump won the election
• Why would they lie about abandoning the project in January 2016?
  • From a written statement: “In late January 2016, I abandoned the Moscow proposal because I lost confidence that the prospective licensee would be able to obtain the real estate, financing and government approvals necessary to bring the proposal to fruition… It was a building proposal that did not succeed and nothing more.”
• If Cohen was so willing to negotiate business deals with Russia as late as June 2016, it makes perfect sense that he would have been the one to attend a Prague meeting to work with Russians on election issues.

While we don’t yet know the full details of their relationship, Hannity failed to disclose that Cohen was his attorney even while extensively covering the FBI’s raid of Cohen’s office.

• What did Fox know about Cohen being Hannity’s attorney, and when did they know it?
• Fox News also declined to comment on a conversation where Julian Assange thought he was alerting Hannity to “news” he had about Senator Mark Warner on Twitter. Assange was actually communicating with a fake Sean Hannity account.
• Hannity frequently mentions Wikileaks on his program and maintains that they were not involved in the 2016 election hack.
  • From January: “I interviewed Julian Assange five times; I’ve talked to him other times. He has said it’s not Russia — there was no collusion, the [Democratic National Committee] emails did not come from them. Congressman Dana Rohrabacher met with him and he says he has proof-positive evidence that would show the Trump campaign never colluded with Russia. Is it in the best interests of the country that if he has that information, he should give it? … Does the country deserve to know the truth if he has that?”
• Hannity’s continual blurring of lines adds a troubling lens to the fact that Russian trolls have a particular affinity for sharing his content.

It’s clear why Cohen is so central to the Russia investigation.

• It has been well documented that Trump-branded properties have been involved illegal schemes with Russian mafia, South American drug cartels, and other criminals.
• Michael Cohen likely knows more about these deals than anyone outside of the family – including how involved Trump, his children, and the Trump Organization really were.