President Donald Trump's personal attorney, Michael Cohen, has received and rejected a request for documents as part of Congress's ongoing investigation into Russia's election meddling and contacts with the Trump campaign.
Cohen, a longtime attorney for the Trump Organization, remains a personal lawyer for Trump. He served as a cable television surrogate for the Republican during the presidential campaign.
The House intelligence committee's request for information from Cohen came as the investigators continued to scrutinise members of Trump's inner circle.
The president's first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, has received subpoenas from the Senate intelligence committee regarding his Russian contacts and his business records.
"I declined the invitation to participate as the request was poorly phrased, overly broad and not capable of being answered," Cohen told The Associated Press. "I find it irresponsible and improper that the request sent to me was leaked by those working on the committee."
Cohen told ABC News pm Tuesday that he had been asked by both the House and Senate intelligence committees to provide information and testimony about contacts he had with Russian officials.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said the allegations of Moscow meddling in the US presidential election are "fiction" invented by the Democrats in order to explain their loss.
Trump made a similar claim in a tweet early on Tuesday: "Russian officials must be laughing at the US & how a lame excuse for why the Dems lost the election has taken over the Fake News."
Cohen's ties with Russian interests came up in February when the New York Times reported that Cohen helped to broker a Ukraine peace plan that would call for Russian troops to withdraw from Ukraine and a referendum to let Ukrainians decide whether the part of the country seized by Russian in 2014 should be leased to Moscow.
Cohen's business associates in the taxi enterprise included a number of men from the former Soviet Union, including his Ukrainian-born father-in-law.
Cohen has made his own unsuccessful attempts at public office, losing a city council race and briefly running for state assembly in New York.
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