McClatchy reported on Friday evening that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s team has evidence of a trip by President Trump’s personal lawyer to Prague in the late summer of 2016. Overseas travel to non-Russian countries might strike some observers as an incremental — if not unimportant — development in Mueller’s probe. That is not the case. Confirmation that Cohen visited Prague could be quite significant.

A trip to Prague by Cohen was included in the dossier of reports written by former British intelligence official Christopher Steele. Those reports, paid for by an attorney working for Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee, included a broad array of raw intelligence, much of which has not been corroborated and much of which would probably defy easy corroboration, focusing on internal political discussions in the Kremlin.

Cohen’s visiting Prague, though, is concrete. Over the course of three of the dossier’s 17 reports, the claim is outlined — but we hasten to note that these allegations have not been confirmed by The Washington Post.

It suggests that Cohen took over management of the relationship with Russia after campaign chairman Paul Manafort was fired from the campaign in August (because of questions about his relationship with a political party in Ukraine). Cohen is said to have met secretly with people in Prague — possibly at the Russian Center for Science and Culture — in the last week of August or the first of September. He allegedly met with representatives of the Russian government, possibly including officials of the Presidential Administration Legal Department; Oleg Solodukhin (who works with the Russian Center for Science and Culture); or Konstantin Kosachev, head of the foreign relations committee in the upper house of parliament. A planned meeting in Moscow, the dossier alleges, was considered too risky, given that a topic of conversation was how to divert attention from Manafort’s links to Russia and a trip to Moscow by Carter Page in July. Another topic of conversation, according to the dossier: allegedly paying off “Romanian hackers” who had been targeting the Clinton campaign.

There is a lot there — but it hinged on Cohen’s having traveled to Prague. If he was not in Prague, none of this happened. If he visited Prague? Well, then we go a level deeper.

McClatchy notes that there is no evidence of who, if anyone, Cohen met with, but that the time frame was in late August or early September, as the dossier suggests.

Which brings us to the other reason this development could be significant.

Cohen, for months, has consistently argued that he never made any such trip.

When the dossier was first published by BuzzFeed, Cohen replied to this allegation specifically in a somewhat odd tweet.

Since countries don’t stamp the front of your passport when you visit, it is not clear what this was meant to show. Nor would showing his passport have been exculpatory if he’d shown, say, a stamp from having entered France or Spain, since travel within most of the European Union doesn’t require additional checks at individual borders.

That, in fact, is what McClatchy alleges: That its sources say Cohen entered the Czech Republic through Germany. A Czech publication reported shortly after the allegation was made that government intelligence officials in that country had no record of Cohen’s visiting. One source said that “if there was such a meeting, he didn’t arrive in the Czech Republic by plane.” McClatchy’s report doesn’t contradict that.

The day after Cohen’s tweet, Trump held a news conference.

“He brings his passport to my office,” the then president-elect said in response to a question. “I say, ‘Hey, wait a minute.’ He didn’t leave the country. He wasn’t out of the country. They had Michael Cohen of the Trump Organization was in Prague. It turned out to be a different Michael Cohen. It’s a disgrace what took place. It’s a disgrace and I think they ought to apologize to start with Michael Cohen.”

That part about the “different Michael Cohen” doesn’t seem to be true. Nor does the part about Cohen not having left the country.

Cohen showed his passport to BuzzFeed. The only travel into the proper area indicated by passport stamps was a trip to and from Italy from July 9 to 17. But note that this is too early for Steele’s time frame — and for the assertion that it was a response to the firing of Manafort. How Cohen would have gotten to Prague is still unclear.

But this contradiction between a clear allegation from the Steele dossier and the assertion that it wasn’t true by Cohen and Trump helped drive the idea that the dossier was broadly discredited shortly after its release. Pick out the Prague trip and nothing that follows could have happened. Put the Prague trip back into the mix? A lot of the other parts of that allegation now become possible.* What’s more, it undermines the credibility of those who insisted that the claim was completely without merit.

Look at it another way: If the central conceit of the Steele’s claim were accurate — that Cohen was working with agents of the Russian government directly to aid Trump’s candidacy — it would be very hard to argue that no collusion took place. That likely requires Cohen’s having been in Prague.

This is our first significant indication that he might have been.

* It’s easy to cherry-pick some aspects which ring true. For example: A source of leaked information from the Democratic National Committee who claimed to be Romanian was actually a Russian intelligence official. Carter Page denied having met with Russian officials during his trip in July, until the House Intelligence Committee got him to admit that he had, however briefly. But much more of the dossier’s allegations lacks any resemblance to what is known.

BEIRUT — U.S.-led strikes against Syrian chemical weapons facilities prompted defiant celebrations in Damascus on Saturday as it became clear that the limited attack posed no threat to President Bashar al-Assad’s hold on power and would likely have no impact on the trajectory of the Syrian war.

Fears of a wider escalation faded after it emerged that the locations targeted by the United States, Britain and France had been confined to three sites associated with the Syrian chemical weapons program, had caused no serious casualties and had probably not destroyed Syria’s capacity to develop and deploy banned chemical substances.

There were expressions of anger from Syria’s allies, with Russia labeling the attack an “act of aggression,” Iran calling it “a war crime” and Syria describing it as “barbarous.” President Trump called the attacks an “enormous success,” tweeting that they represented a “Mission Accomplished.”

But on the streets of Damascus, there was jubilation as government supporters realized a more expansive assault would not materialize. Residents gathered in central squares and danced to patriotic songs, waving Syrian flags alongside those of Russia and Iran, Syria’s allies in the fight against the anti-Assad rebellion.

[6 basic questions about the war in Syria]

“The honorable cannot be humiliated,” said a tweet by the Twitter account maintained by Assad’s office shortly after the attack. A few hours later, the account tweeted a video of him walking nonchalantly to work through the halls of the Syrian presidential palace.

Though the strikes appeared to have satisfied the conflicting agendas of the world powers competing for influence in Syria, they won’t make any difference to the war on the ground — which Assad is steadily winning, said Amr al-Azm, a professor of history at Shawnee University in Ohio.

“This was more about the Western allies making sure their red lines were addressed rather than trying to seriously damage the Assad regime, prevent the further killing of civilians or reduce the capacity of the Assad regime to keep fighting,” he said.

“From Assad’s perspective, this was a big win. He must be thinking, this is good, I came out on top, I gained much more than I lost.”

It was unclear even whether there would be a long-term impact on Syria’s capacity to develop and use chemical weapons. Trump had telegraphed for days the likely response of the United States to the alleged chemical attack that killed civilians in a rebel stronghold last Saturday, giving the Syrian authorities and their Iranian and Russian allies time to vacate the facilities that were targeted — and perhaps also to remove vital equipment and stores.

Russia said that the damage had been minimal. According to the Syrian army command, three civilians were injured, in the vicinity of one of the strikes against Homs.

“It remains to be seen whether the allied attack fulfilled all its intended goals,” said Karl Dewey of Jane’s by I.H.S. Markit defense consultancy.

This was the second strike against Syria in a little over a year, in response to the second alleged use by the government of a poison gas against its citizens. Last April, the United States bombed the Shayrat air base in the province of Homs in retaliation for a sarin gas attack that killed around 70 people in the northern town of Khan Sheikhoun.

On April 7, videos again emerged of men, women and children with foam on their mouths, after a bomb allegedly containing toxic gas was dropped in a residential neighborhood of the rebel-held town of Douma, in the eastern suburbs of Damascus.

A day later, the rebels in the town surrendered, making the use of chemical weapons in this instance, if confirmed, a successful tactic, Azm said.

The retaliatory airstrikes went further than last year’s attack, targeting production and research facilities as well as command centers from which attacks are launched. The Pentagon said the locations hit were a scientific research center in the Barzeh suburb of Damascus, a chemical weapons storage facility west of Homs and a chemical weapons equipment storage facility and a command post, also near Homs.

[Where the airstrikes in Syria hit ]

But although Defense Department spokeswoman Dana White said the strikes had “set the Syrian chemical weapons program back for years,” Pentagon officials acknowledged that a “residual” capacity remained.

Seeking to tamp down the global tensions that soared after Trump’s tweet last week that missiles are “coming, nice and new and smart,” the United States and its allies stressed the limited nature of their goals.

“This was not about interfering in a civil war, and it was not about regime change,” British Prime Minister Theresa May told a news conference in London.

White echoed that comment, saying the attack “does not represent a change in U.S. policy, nor an attempt to depose the Syrian regime.”

In Damascus, residents jolted awake by explosions at 4 a.m. expressed relief that the attack was short-lived.

“Thank God this was less than we had feared. We were scared of a bigger assault that could be devastating, but we are happy it was limited and less powerful,” said Mayda Kumejian, a Damascus resident contacted by telephone. She described being wakened by explosions and jets roaring overhead, only to realize about an hour later that there would be no prolonged attack.

“This strike is only muscle flexing by Trump to show his power,” she said. “Assad’s regime is much stronger now.”

The crowds that gathered in Damascus also expressed scorn, waving portraits of Assad and mocking Trump.

“We tell Trump, you can do nothing. Here we are celebrating to show that you are bankrupt,” said a woman interviewed on state television.

For Syrians who had welcomed the prospect of an American attack — and in many cases, called for them over many years — hopes that the U.S. threats might make a difference quickly soured into disappointment.

“We thought it would be much bigger than this,” said Ahmed Primo, a journalist and activist now living in the Turkish city of Gaziantep. “Assad might have used chemical weapons this time, but he’s been indiscriminately targeting civilians for years. Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed; hundreds of thousands of people have been disappeared. After seven years of war, we don’t believe that anyone will come to help the Syrian people anymore.”

The strikes give Assad a green light to sustain his pursuit of a military solution against opposition areas in which many more civilians may die even if chemical weapons aren’t used, other rebel supporters said.

“According to the cowardly statements and the weak strike by the West, Assad is allowed to use all kinds of weapons to kill us except chemicals,” tweeted Syrian opposition journalist Hadi Abdallah. “The international community has set him free as a monster to annihilate the Syrian people.”

The United States and its allies said they hoped the attack would propel momentum toward the revival of peace talks in Geneva that have so far proved fruitless.

But there was no reason to believe these strikes would give any new incentive to Assad to cooperate with a peace process that Washington says should result in his removal from power, said Emile Hokayem of the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

“Assad has absorbed worse before, and he will absorb this,” he said.

Anton Troianovski in Moscow, Suzan Haidamous in Beirut and Zakaria Zakaria in Istanbul contributed reporting.

Read more:

Nikki Haley warns that U.S. forces ‘locked and loaded’ if Syria stages another chemical attack

Full transcript of Trump’s address on Syria airstrikes

President Trump issued a pardon Friday to Lewis “Scooter” Libby, offering forgiveness to a former chief of staff to Vice President Richard B. Cheney who was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice related to the leak of a CIA officer’s identity.

“I don’t know Mr. Libby,” Trump said in a statement, “but for years I have heard that he has been treated unfairly. Hopefully, this full pardon will help rectify a very sad portion of his life.”

In a statement explaining Trump’s action, the White House noted that in 2015 one of the key witnesses against Libby recanted her testimony, among other factors.

The White House also said that Libby’s past government service and his record since his conviction have been “similarly unblemished, and he continues to be held in high regard by his colleagues and peers.”

Libby was convicted of four felonies in 2007 — for perjury before a grand jury, lying to FBI investigators and obstruction of justice during an investigation into the disclosure of the work of Valerie Plame Wilson, a former covert CIA agent and the wife of former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV.

Libby was sentenced to 30 months in prison and fined $250,000, but his sentence was commuted by then-President George W. Bush. Although spared prison time, Libby was not pardoned.

Cheney lobbied Bush aggressively for a pardon for Libby, and Bush’s refusal was said to have caused a strain in the relationship between the two men. To the former vice president and others in his orbit, Libby’s conviction was the product of an overzealous special prosecutor and a liberal Washington jury.

“Scooter Libby is one of the most capable, principled, and honorable men I have ever known,” Cheney said in a statement Friday. “He is innocent, and he and his family have suffered for years because of his wrongful conviction. I am grateful today that President Trump righted this wrong by issuing a full pardon to Scooter, and I am thrilled for Scooter and his family.”

The unfinished business of the Libby conviction has been a longtime rallying point for conservatives, including current members of Trump’s administration. The pardon has been under consideration for several months, people familiar with the president’s thinking have said.

Victoria Toensing, Libby’s lawyer, said Friday that Trump called her personally around 1 p.m. to break the news. She said Trump told her Libby was “a wonderful person who got screwed.”

“Justice called out for it, is what the president said to us,” Toensing said. “He was a good guy who got screwed. The facts are compelling.”

Toensing declined to say what conversations she had with the White House about Libby in recent days and weeks. She and her husband had been in talks to represent Trump in the Russia investigation.

Toensing submitted materials to the White House last year asserting Libby’s innocence.

“Suffice to say, he’s thrilled,” she said of Libby, who she said had just gotten out of an MRI.

Given the nature of Libby’s crimes, Trump came under fire from critics Friday after he took to Twitter to accuse former FBI director James B. Comey of leaking classified information and lying to Congress.

“On the day the President wrongly attacks Comey for being a ‘leaker and liar’ he considers pardoning a convicted leaker and liar, Scooter Libby,” Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) wrote on Twitter. “This is the President’s way of sending a message to those implicated in the Russia investigation: You have my back and I‘ll have yours.”

[Analysis: Trump’s plan to pardon ‘Scooter’ Libby sends a message to witnesses in Mueller probe]

Asked whether she thought Trump had been trying to send a message to others aside from Libby with the pardon, Toensing said: “I’m going to tell you what I did before — the merits of the case cry out for a pardon, this isn’t just a be-nice pardon. A key witness recanted. This cries out for a pardon.”

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Libby’s pardon had nothing to do with the Mueller probe.

“One thing has nothing to do with the other,” she told reporters.

The chief federal prosecutor in Libby’s case was Patrick Fitzgerald, then the U.S. attorney from the Northern District of Illinois. Fitzgerald is a longtime friend and colleague of Comey, whose new memoir paints a scathing portrait of Trump’s character and conduct in office.

In a statement released after the pardon, Toensing called out Comey, who was deputy attorney general during Libby’s case and appointed Fitzgerald as special prosecutor to investigate the matter.

“Our law firm, diGenova Toensing, was honored to represent Lewis (Scooter) Libby to request a pardon for the injustice inflicted on him and his family by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald and then-Deputy Attorney General James Comey,” Toensing said.

She claimed that both Comey and Fitzgerald knew before the investigation began that another person was responsible for the leak.

Libby, in a statement released by Toensing, said he and his family were “immensely grateful to President Trump for his gracious decision to grant a pardon,” and he criticized what he viewed as “defects” in the justice system that he said were “so evident in the handling not just of my matter.”

“For over a dozen years we have suffered under the weight of a terrible injustice,” Libby said. “To his great credit, President Trump recognized this wrong and would not let it persist.”

Libby said that others had told him that they would not go into public service after seeing how he was treated because of his government role.

“Perhaps one day public service in America will prove less of a blood sport,” he said.

Trump has rarely used his presidential power to pardon, but last August granted clemency to Joe Arpaio, a controversial Arizona sheriff who had been a longtime Trump ally and campaign-trail companion.

Arpaio was found in contempt of court for defying a federal judge’s order to stop detaining people simply because he suspected them of being undocumented immigrants. In addition to racial profiling, Arpaio was long criticized for what many in the community decried as inhumane prisons in Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix.

Libby’s trouble began with the drumbeat leading up to the invasion of Iraq.

In January 2003, President Bush used his State of the Union address to justify military action against Saddam Hussein’s regime. The president told the country that Iraq officials had attempted to purchase yellowcake uranium in Niger.

Six months later, the New York Times published an opinion piece by Wilson, the former ambassador. In the article, Wilson recounted a 2002 trip he made to Niger to substantiate the allegations, later finding them to be false.

On July 14, syndicated columnist Robert Novak wrote a column outing Wilson’s wife as a CIA “operative.” The CIA requested a Department of Justice investigation into the naming of Plame as an agent — a breach of classified information.

An FBI investigation started into whether Plame’s identity was leaked to reporters as political payback for her husband’s public challenge to the administration.

By the end of 2003, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft recused himself from the case. That left the decision on how to proceed to Comey. The future FBI director appointed Fitzgerald as special counsel.

The grand jury investigated the leaks. No one was ever charged for outing Plame, but Libby was charged with federal obstruction of justice and perjury charges for lying to investigators. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage told investigators he was the source for Novak’s column.

In March 2007, Libby was found guilty on the four felony counts, becoming the highest-ranking White House official convicted since the Iran-contra scandal in the 1980s.

Kyle Swenson and Philip Rucker contributed to this report.