Lawyers only define the law, not morality

There is no law against not giving your spouse a birthday present. Just a reminder that not all ethical decisions have to be approved by a lawyer, let alone a special counsel. Here is what we knew before the final Mueller report about Trump and the Russians during the 2016 campaign

Wikipedia -  Trump launched his campaign for the presidency in June 2015. Multiple sources have reported that Trump signed a letter of intent to develop the building, provisionally named Trump World Tower Moscow, in October 2015. Throughout the primary and general election campaigns, he consistently praised Russia and Russian president Vladimir Putin, while repeatedly making public statements that he had no business dealings with Russia, saying that he had "nothing to do with Russia" and "I know nothing about Russia ... I don’t deal there." However, in November 2018 Trump told reporters that "we were thinking about building a building" in Moscow, adding that "everybody knew about it" and "there would have been nothing wrong with it."

According to former Trump attorney Michael Cohen, Trump's interest in a possible Moscow project continued through most of the primary campaign, ending in June 2016.The president's attorney Rudy Giuliani later said that the tower remained an "active proposal" throughout the campaign, and that Trump recalled discussing it with Cohen, possibly as late as October or November 2016. He quoted Trump as having said the discussions were "going on from the day I announced to the day I won."
The proposal came back to public attention in November 2018, when Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about the issue, in a prosecution brought by the office of the special counsel.

Cohen had told a Senate committee that the project was dropped in January 2016 because they couldn't get the necessary permissions. However, on November 29, 2018, Cohen admitted in a court proceeding that those statements were untrue, and that he had continued to pursue the possibility of a Trump Tower Moscow until June 2016. He said that in the course of those negotiations he spoke directly with a representative of the Kremlin press office. He said he contemplated going to Moscow himself, although in fact he never did, and he raised the possibility of Trump going to Moscow during the general election campaign to seal the deal. He said he personally briefed Trump about the project on several occasions, as well as Trump family members.

In trying to make arrangements with Moscow, Cohen worked closely with [Felix] Sater. According to Sater, they discussed the possibility of giving a $50 million penthouse in the tower to Russian president Vladimir Putin, saying that Putin living there would increase the value and saleability of the other units. Sater stated that the proposal was dropped in June 2016 because news reports emerged then about the Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee, making a Russian business connection into a political liability.