Michael Cohen paid $500,000 by oligarch’s firm
A shell company that Michael Cohen used to pay hush money to a pornographic film actress received payments totaling more than $1 million from an American company linked to a Russian oligarch and several corporations with business before the Trump administration, according to documents and interviews.
Financial records reviewed by The New York Times show that Cohen, President Trump’s personal lawyer and longtime fixer, used the shell company, Essential Consultants LLC, for an array of business activities that went far beyond what was publicly known. Transactions totaling at least $4.4 million flowed through Essential Consultants starting shortly before Trump was elected president and continuing to this January, the records show.
Among the previously unreported transactions were payments last year totaling about $500,000 from Columbus Nova, an investment firm in New York whose biggest client is a company controlled by Viktor Vekselberg, the Russian oligarch. A lawyer for Columbus Nova described the money as a consulting fee that had nothing to do with Vekselberg.
Other transactions described in the financial records range from hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments by Fortune 500 firms with business before the Trump administration, to small amounts related to unexplained activities in foreign countries.
References to the transactions first appeared in a document posted to Twitter on Tuesday by Michael Avenatti, the lawyer for Stephanie Clifford, the pornographic film star who was paid $130,000 by Essential Consultants to keep quiet about her alleged affair with Trump. The lawyer’s six-page document, titled “Preliminary Report of Findings,” does not explain the source of his information but describes in detail dates, dollar amounts and parties involved in various dealings by Cohen and his company.
The Times’ review of financial records confirmed much of what was in Avenatti’s report. In addition, a review of emails and interviews shed additional light on Cohen’s dealings with the company connected to Vekselberg, who was stopped and questioned at an airport earlier this year by investigators for Robert Mueller, the special counsel examining Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Taken together, the Times’ reporting and Avenatti’s document offer the most detailed picture to date on Cohen’s business dealings and financial entanglements in the run-up to and aftermath of the election.