Giuliani: Trump ‘unaware’ of Cohen’s consulting income
Bloomberg News
WASHINGTON — Donald Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani said Wednesday that the president didn’t know about payments his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, had received from AT&T Inc., Novartis AG and a firm linked to Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg.
“The president was unaware of this,” Mr. Giuliani said in an interview, referring to the revelations about Mr. Cohen’s income that surfaced late Tuesday. “The president is not involved in any respect. It’s a dead issue, as far as I’m concerned.”
The payments to Mr. Cohen’s firm — Essential Consultants LLC — were revealed by attorney Michael Avenatti. Mr. Avenatti is representing Stephanie Clifford, the adult film star known as Stormy Daniels, who was paid $130,000 by Mr. Cohen just before the 2016 presidential election to remain silent about an alleged sexual encounter with Mr. Trump a decade earlier.
Mr. Avenatti’s report alleged that Mr. Cohen used a company he established weeks before the 2016 election to receive the payments from a variety of businesses — including $500,000 from one associated with a Russian billionaire. Financial documents reviewed by The Associated Press appear to back up much of Mr. Avenatti’s report.
The corporate ties could suggest Mr. Cohen was peddling his influence and profiting from his relationship with the president. They also raised questions about whether Mr. Trump knew about the arrangement.
After Mr. Avenatti tweeted Tuesday that “Mr. Trump and Mr. Cohen have a lot of explaining to do,” those words touched off a scramble in companies from South Korea to Switzerland to explain how they came to deposit money in the account of Mr. Trump’s lawyer and longtime fixer.
“The ‘explanations’ being provided by these various entities are raising many more additional questions than they are answering,” Mr. Avenatti said by telephone Wednesday, saying Mr. Cohen should disclose who paid him and why. “Unfortunately, I am just a lawyer. Michael Cohen evidently is a lawyer, a real estate agent, an accountant, a doctor, a business consultant and a venture capitalist. Who knew that Michael Cohen would be exposed as the Leonardo da Vinci of our time?”
Mr. Giuliani said he briefly discussed the payments with Mr. Trump by phone Tuesday night, and he said neither he nor the president knows why Mr. Cohen received them.
Getting into a taxi in New York City on Wednesday, Mr. Cohen said of Mr. Avenatti, “His document is inaccurate,” according News.
Mr. Cohen’s lawyers told a New York judge Wednesday that Mr. Avenatti made statements “in an apparent attempt to prejudice and discredit Mr. Cohen” as he seeks to intervene in a civil case the Trump lawyer brought stemming from April 9 raids on his home and office. The raids were carried out by federal agents looking for evidence in a criminal probe.
The lawyers wrote that some of the information Mr. Avenatti published Tuesday did appear to come from Mr. Cohen’s actual bank records.
Mr. Vekselberg is among a handful of Russians to have been sanctioned by the U.S. over the Kremlin’s election meddling, the subject of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. He is linked to Columbus Nova, one of the firms that paid Mr. Cohen. Columbus Nova hasn’t denied making $500,000 in deposits into the Cohen account, but it and Mr. Vekselberg deny the money had anything to do with him. to NBC