The corporations known to have paid bribes to Michael Cohen for access to or favorable treatment from the Trump Administration are having questions asked of them. Yes, actual journalism is breaking out all over!
Reporting from the Washington Post says that Columbus Nova, the firm Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg, paid Cohen $500,000 between January and August 2017 for help with real estate investments. Weirdly, this is probably the most truthy explanation of the four that will appear in this post. I’m sure the deals were dodgy, but that doesn’t mean that wasn’t what they were paying for.
AT&T told the Post they hired Cohen “to provide insights into understanding the new administration.” AT&T had several important issues before federal officials, including the need to stop the Justice Department from blocking their proposed merger with Time Warner. If you decode the language they use, this is straight-up payment for access, and they aren’t denying it.
Novartis, a giant Swiss drugmaker, told the post it hired Essential Consultants because it “believed that Michael Cohen could advise the company as to how the Trump administration might approach certain US healthcare policy matters, including the Affordable Care Act.” Again, the statement is probably true — they were paying for access. However, they claim that after an initial meeting with Cohen, Novartis determined that he “would be unable to provide the services that Novartis had anticipated related to US healthcare policy matters and the decision was taken not to engage further.” However, the company claimed it could not terminate the contract “for cause,” and thus paid the agreed-upon $1.2 million anyway. That obviously is BS. Anyone who has seen the Soprano recognizes that Cohen got himself a no-show job by issuing a threat of some kind.
But here is one that really takes the biscuit:
Korea Aerospace Industries confirmed to The Washington Post that it paid $150,000 to Cohen’s company, but spokesman Oh Sung-keon said that it was unaware of Essential Consultants’ connection to Trump. The company said it paid Cohen’s firm “to inform reorganization of our internal accounting system.”
Oh. My. God.
The company is in contention for a $16 billion contract with Lockheed Martin for jet trainers.