Watchdog groups take Cohen to task
WASHINGTON – Watchdog groups slammed President Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen on Wednesday for collecting millions from a firm tied to a Russian oligarch and companies with business before the Trump administration.
Essential Consultants, a limited liability company Cohen used to pay Stormy Daniels days before the 2016 presidential election, received payments from a subsidiary of Swiss-based drugmaker Novartis, telecom giant AT&T and Columbus Nova, an American firm tied to Russian businessman Viktor Vekselberg.
AT&T, which has a proposed merger with Time-Warner pending before the Justice Department, confirmed it paid Cohen for “insights into understanding the new administration.” Novartis, which makes Ritalin, Lamisil and other drugs, said it paid Cohen over the course of a year for help with “U.S. health care policy.”
Watchdog groups said Cohen had not worked on those issues, and he appeared to mainly be trading on his relationship with the president.
“All he is is a guy who’s close to Trump,” said Robert Weissman, presi-
dent of Public Citizen. “Nothing about it makes any sense at all.” He called on Congress to investigate and for AT&T and Novartis to make public the details of their arrangements with Cohen, who is under criminal investigation by federal prosecutors in New York.
Novartis acknowledged in a statement Wednesday that company officials were questioned by special counsel Robert Mueller’s office over their relationship with Cohen. The company declined to say how it came into contact with Cohen or what services, specifically, he provided.
Wednesday evening, AT&T issued a statement that it was contacted by Mueller’s office about Cohen late last year and “cooperated fully, providing all information requested.”
‘Underbelly of Washington’
Fred Wertheimer, who runs the watchdog group Democracy 21, said there’s no precedent for the president’s personal lawyer benefiting from consulting contracts with firms trying to influence his administration.
“This was clearly an effort by these companies to see if Michael Cohen’s appearance of being close to Trump can buy them access, influence and information,” Wertheimer said.
“This provides a classic example of the underbelly of Washington,” he said.
Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani said Wednesday that the payments to Cohen “have nothing to do” with the president.
Cohen and his lawyer Steve Ryan did not respond to interview requests from USA TODAY on Wednesday.
Cohen received $500,000 from Columbus Nova, the firm tied to Vekselberg, who is close to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Vekselberg was questioned about the payments to Cohen by investigators helping Mueller in his inquiry into suspected Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, CNN reported this week. Last month, the Trump administration included Vekselberg on a list of Russians under economic sanctions.
In a statement, Columbus Nova said the firm is owned and controlled by Americans, not Vekselberg, and said it paid Cohen for business consulting.
Cohen’s firm received payments from Korea Aerospace Industries, which works with American defense contractor Lockheed Martin on a bid to build the next generation of training jets for the U.S. Air Force. The contract, worth about $16 billion to the winner, was to be awarded before the end of last year, but the Air Force decided in November 2017 to delay the award. That month, Cohen’s shell company received a payment of
$150,000 from the Korean company, according to a document released by Daniels’ lawyer Michael Avenatti.
The company confirmed the payment to Essential Consultants, telling the Associated Press it was for legal advice on accounting standards, but it declined to answer further questions.
Trump put pressure on major aerospace contractors to lower prices for military aircraft during a post-election meeting in December 2016 at his Mar-aLago resort in South Florida. After the contract award delay, the Korean company’s officials said Lockheed demanded it help push down the price of the jets, which the country sells to several other foreign countries.
Novartis, which said it paid Cohen
$1.2 million over a year, regularly has drug approvals pending before the Food and Drug Administration. Novartis CEO Joseph Jimenez met with Trump at the White House, along with other pharmaceutical executives, in early 2017 to discuss the president’s plans to lower the price of prescription drugs.
Trump met with the company’s current CEO, Vasant Narasimhan, over dinner during the World Economic Forum in Switzerland in January.
The company has been under pressure from federal prosecutors in New York for providing expensive meals and alcohol to doctors in exchange, the prosecutors said, for writing prescriptions of Novartis-made drugs.
AT&T officials said they began working with Cohen in early 2017, shortly after Trump’s inauguration, and payments to Cohen topped $500,000.
Cohen is not a registered lobbyist, and the companies said he did not lobby on their behalf. Under federal law, only individuals who spend at least 20% of their time on lobbying activity in a three-month period are required to register as lobbyists with the Senate.
Unless Cohen set up meetings with White House officials on behalf of the companies and exceeded the 20% threshold, he probably did not break any federal rules, said Larry Noble, a former Federal Election Commission lawyer and senior director of the Campaign Legal Center watchdog group.
Noble said Trump’s unorthodox approach to the presidency, including his penchant to act from the gut and overrule even Cabinet secretaries via Twitter, may help explain why companies sought Cohen’s insights. “Maybe getting strategic advice from people who know (Trump) personally is the smartest move,” Noble said.
Trump “treats the government as a family business,” he said, “and if you want to have anything done with the family business, your best bet is to get to know what the head of the family wants, what he thinks is important, what makes him happy and what makes him angry.”
‘Cardinal’ ethics restriction
New York’s ethics rules require that lawyers keep their clients’ money “in a special account or accounts, separate from any business or personal accounts of the lawyer or lawyer’s firm.”
Avenatti’s report lists transactions involving former Republican National Committee fundraiser Elliott Broidy, one of Cohen’s clients. He said that on Dec. 29, 2017, $62,500 was wired from Broidy’s account to an account belonging to a group of real estate lawyers. On Jan. 2, the same amount was transferred to an account belonging to Essential Consultants. Broidy confirmed that he engaged Cohen to pay a former Playboy model.
Cohen may have used the same limited liability company as a vehicle for private consulting work. AT&T confirmed that it hired Cohen, via his LLC, for consulting services, for which it paid $200,000.
“No dollar that belongs to someone else can be in the same account as a dollar that belongs to the lawyer,” said Stephen Gillers, a law professor at New York University. “That’s one of the cardinal rules in the professional conduct rules.”