WASHINGTON (AP) — The House intelligence committee chairman said he will "do what is necessary” to confirm a published report that President Donald Trump directed his personal attorney Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about negotiations over a real estate project in Moscow during the 2016 election.
Democrat Rep. Adam Schiff of California says the allegation that Trump asked Cohen to lie "to curtail the investigation and cover up his business dealings with Russia is among the most serious to date.”
The report by BuzzFeed News, citing two unnamed law enforcement officials, says that Trump directed Cohen to lie to Congress and that Cohen regularly briefed Trump on the Moscow project. The Associated Press has not independently confirmed the report.
An adviser to Cohen, Lanny Davis, declined to comment.

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MOSCOW (Reuters) -- Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday that President Vladimir Putin had agreed to a proposal by German Chancellor Angela Merkel for German experts to monitor the Kerch Strait near Crimea.
Lavrov said Putin had agreed to the request a month ago, but that the Germans had still not arrived.
In November, Russia detained three Ukrainian navy vessels and their crews in the Black Sea near the Kerch Strait, fuelling tensions between the two countries.
Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.

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WASHINGTON (AFP) – U.S. investigators were on Friday to begin to question diplomatic staff who were stationed at the Ecuadorian embassy in London during WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's years-long stay about his visitors, according to the whistleblower group.
It follows international subpoenas from the U.S. Department of Justice, which is probing a report that President Donald Trump's disgraced former 2016 campaign chairman Paul Manafort held secret talks there with Assange, Wikileaks said.
The Justice Department, which declined to comment on the matter, wanted to talk to six staff members from the embassy and would start to interview them in the Ecuadorian capital Quito on Friday, it added.
Britain's The Guardian newspaper claimed in November that Manafort -- who was convicted of multiple charges including bank fraud and money laundering in two separate cases last year -- met Assange on several occasions from 2013 to 2016.
The period coincided with Manafort becoming a key figure in Trump's bid for the White House and preceded Wikileaks publishing thousands of emails allegedly stolen by Russian hackers from the rival Democratic campaign of Hillary Clinton.
 
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LONDON (Reuters) -- German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s protege appealed to the British on Friday to stay in the European Union, saying her compatriots had not forgotten how Britain welcomed Germany back as a sovereign nation after World War Two.
Conservative leader Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, who succeeded Merkel as leader of the Christian Democrats, joined German politicians, industrialists and artists in a last-minute plea to Britons as the clock ticks down to Brexit in 70 days.
"Without your great nation, this continent would not be what it is today,” they said in the letter, which was published in The Times newspaper.
"After the horrors of the Second World War, Britain did not give up on us. It has welcomed Germany back as a sovereign nation and a European power.”

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LONDON (AFP) -- Queen Elizabeth II's 97-year-old husband Prince Philip emerged "shocked and shaken" but unhurt from a car crash that flipped his Land Rover on its side and stirred up a UK debate on Friday about old age and driving.
A nine-month-old baby who was in the back seat of the Kia hatchback involved was uninjured, while one of the two women inside hurt her wrist, local police said.
"We are aware of the public interest in this case, however, as with any other investigation it would be inappropriate to speculate on the causes of the collision until an investigation is carried out," the police said in a statement.
Images published by UK media showed a dark Land Rover standing on its side by the curb, driver's side down, its windscreen smashed, glass and metal debris scattered across a road running by a leafy park.
"I was driving home and I saw a car, a black (Land) Rover come out from a side road and it rolled," witness Roy Warne told BBC Radio on Friday.
"There was a huge collision with another car. I went to the other car and there was a baby in the back" in a harness.

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TOKYO (AFP) -- Hitachi said Friday it would freeze construction of its stalled nuclear power station in Wales due to problems financing the project, a blow to Britain's nuclear strategy and a costly decision for the Japanese firm.
The company said in a statement the decision was made "from the viewpoint of Hitachi's economic rationality as a private enterprise".
Shelving the project at the Wylfa Newydd plant on Anglesey, a small island off the Welsh coast, will cost the Japanese firm 300 billion yen ($2.8 billion), it said.
Hitachi launched the planned construction after acquiring Britain-based Horizon Nuclear Power in 2012.
The British government had reportedly agreed to finance two thirds of the three trillion yen construction cost, with Hitachi as well as Japanese and British investors scheduled to cover the balance.
But Hitachi's fund-raising efforts have been deadlocked at home while its request for additional investment from the British government has been shelved with London consumed by Brexit.