Michael Cohen’s angle

Best-case scenario: Essential Consultants, the shell company set up by Michael Cohen, was a brazen play by the President’s lawyer to profit off his longtime client winning the White House by selling access. Worst-case scenario: Something much darker. Over the course of the last year, pharmaceutical giant Novartis paid the company a whopping $1.2 million for what it called “access to not just Trump, but also the circle around him.”

AT&T said its $200,000 payments were for “insights” into the new administration (which, yes, is vetting AT&T’s merger with Time Warner).

Korea Airspace stated that its $150,000 was for help with “accounting standards.”

But it’s the half-million from Columbus Nova, an American-run subsidiary of a company owned by Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg, a close ally of Vladimir Putin, that glows most radioactively.

Cohen told his bank that Essential’s focus would be on real-estate consulting. But its initial use was to funnel $130,000 in hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels.

It’s been said many times now that Trump didn’t drain the swamp as promised. It now looks like he and his associates supersized and monetized it.