The rolling tire-fire that is the Michael Cohen scandal has fascinated and confused nearly everyone, but Fordham Law School’s Jed Schugerman seems to feel that what Cohen was really doing fits very nicely into the main issue that Special Counsel Robert Mueller is investigating in the larger scale: which is the potentially attempts by members of the Trump campaign and his businesss associates who were open and willing to trade quid pro quo with corporate and even foreign entities.
Talk of a smoking gun here would be premature. But the new evidence provides a preview of what a smoking gun might look like and a road map for how to find it in the developing case against President Donald Trump. These allegations are not just about a hush payment and campaign finance felonies. This is a significant step toward establishing quid pro quo bribery and conspiracy against the United States.
First, Vekselberg recently increased his share to 26.5 percent in the aluminum firm Rusal. That firm was owned by Oleg Deripaska, the Russian billionaire whose ties to former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort are under scrutiny by special counsel Robert Mueller. Two of Vekselberg’s American partners, meanwhile, donated more than $1 million to Trump’s inaugural committee and Vekselberg also had business ties to Trump’s Commerce Secretary Wilbur L. Ross.
Now, Congress has been legislating tougher sanctions against Putin and Russia over the past year by sweeping, close-to-unanimous bipartisan majorities. But the Trump administration has been softening or delaying those sanctions at every turn. Last month, the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control finally implemented congressional sanctions against Deripaska and Rusal, in addition to other Russians. The Treasury Department cited allegations that Deripaska ordered the murder of a businessman and had links to a Russian organized crime group. But on April 23, the Trump administration announced major delays on implementation, “slow-rolling” the sanctions seemingly to give Rusal time to minimize the damage and to appeal the sanctions. Treasury gave Rusal an extension to next October, and Reuters reported the department would “consider lifting [the sanctions] if United Company Rusal PLC’s major shareholder, Russian tycoon Oleg Deripaska, ceded control of the company,” which he soon did. “Given the impact on our partners and allies, we are … extending the maintenance and wind-down period while we consider RUSAL’s petition,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement.
Essentially Schugerman point out that sanctioned oligarchs Deripaska and Vekselberg — who are linked through Russian aluminum company Rusal in which they are both invested — may have funneled $500,000 to Trump personal attorney Michael Cohen through Columbus Nova the American branch of Vekselberg’s company Renova which is operated by this cousin Andrew Intrata — who also happens to be a board member of parent company Renova — in order to block and “slow roll” the implementation of sanctions on various Russian entities.
All of this seems, yet again, to circle back around to sanctions on Russia.
Schugerman explained his thinking last night to Chris Hayes on All In.
He also wrote for Salon the following:
Given the outrageous conduct of Putin and Deripaska, and given the almost unanimous votes in Congress to impose tough sanctions, these accommodations should have been considered stunning. As of Tuesday night, they stink to high heaven.
And the question must be raised: Was there a quid pro quo understanding between Vekselberg and Trump associates in January 2017? It is crucial to remember here what was happening in December 2016 and January 2017 in regard to Russia sanctions. Here’s what I summarized in an earlier Slate piece on Kushner, Qatar, and Russian money: The Steele dossier alleged that Russians had made a deal with Trump associates for the Russians to sell Rosneft, the massive state energy company, and use the commissions to give Trump associates payments under the radar, in return for lifting or softening sanctions. The Rosneft sale went through in December 2016, a month after the election, coinciding with Jared Kushner, Michael Flynn, and Carter Page’s various alleged communications with Russians. Just eight days before this oil megadeal, Flynn and Kushner met Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak at Trump Tower, and Kushner reportedly proposed a secret communication link with the Kremlin through the Russian embassy. Then, a few days after the Rosneft deal, Kushner met Sergey Gorkov, chairman of Russia’s government-owned VE Bank, or VEB, and Putin’s close confidant.
Analysts have described VEB as Putin’s “private slush fund,” a source of money independent from official Russia budgeting. VEB is under strict U.S. sanctions. Gorkov reportedly flew to Japan to meet with Putin practically immediately. On Dec. 29, President Barack Obama ordered new Russian sanctions for election hacking and interference—and Flynn reportedly had five calls with Kislyak. We later learned that they discussed Russian sanctions after Flynn pleaded guilty to lying about this fact to federal investigators. Trump tweeted about Putin the next day, calling him “very smart” for not responding to Obama’s sanctions before Trump has had a chance to transition into office.
We’ve now learned, in the very next month after the Kushner/Flynn back-channel contacts with Russia, the Vekselberg-connected payments to Cohen began. And they occurred, inexplicably enough, after the Steele dossier was published. Again, this is all clearly now a subject of Mueller’s probe. As the New York Times first reported last week, Mueller’s agents questioned Vekselberg when he flew into New York earlier this year. CNN reported on Tuesday that they asked him about these particular payments. What might be the plausible innocent explanation for a Putin-associated Russian oligarch, to use Rudy Giuliani’s phrase, “funneling” money to Trump’s personal lawyer through a fund used to pay hush money to one or more women and as that oligarch was due to benefit from Trump’s sanction policies? Maybe they have an explanation, but it’s hard to imagine it, and it’s hard to imagine how persuasive a jury would find it.
Pointing out that in including Columbus Nova $500k Cohen was paid nearly $4.4 Million by AT&T, who happen to have their merger with Time Warner currently on the table, by Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI) who have a pending potential contract to make jet trainers for the USAF, and by drug company Novartis who may have wanted to have influence over Trump in his efforts to cut consumer drug prices and that they all may have all had the same goal, to gain intimate personal intel and potential influence on Trump which would only be available through his own personal attorney, Michael Cohen.
This kind of influence in and of itself isn’t illegal, in Washington it’s called being a “lobbyist” — except that Cohen has never registered as a lobbyist and certainly hasn’t registered as a foreign lobbyist or agent as required by FARA. That same failure happens to be exactly what both Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort managed to not bother to do, and that the structure of the payments to Cohen may have been set up to avoid setting off reporting requirements which would give the hints of bank fraud and wire fraud in the transactions.
On that point Michael Avenatti revealed last night on Rachel Maddow’s show that there wasn’t just one Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) generated by Cohen’s bank to the Treasury Dept. over his payments to Stormy Daniels for the NDA — there were three such reports generated to Treasury.
Also we have to recall that while Cohen was being paid by all these entities during 2017 as Kushner and Flynn were attempting to set up secret back-channel communications to Russia through the Crown Prince of the UAE in the Secheylle Islands, Cohen himself was directly involved in an effort to deliver a “peace plan” for the Russia/Crimea conflict to Flynn’s desk which again would have completely lifted sanctions on Russia, and even after Flynn was fired members of the Trump NSC continued to try and have the State Dept drop sanctions on Russia until Congress in response eventually pushed back and implemented a set of sanctions own their own that Trump wasn’t legally allowed to block. All of this and the payments to Cohen may not have been separate, disparate events.
Even without Trump’s involvement we already have quid — the payment from Columbus Nova — and the pro quo — the various efforts to block or end sanctions on Russia.
Even if Trump didn’t initially know about the payments to Cohen if he found about it later and attempted to cover it up we’re back to obstruction of justice and misprision of felony as I’ve previously described in other diaries about how collusions has already been proven and as Schugerman also points out in Slate.
Fiinally, even if Trump denies that he knew about any of the questionable Cohen payments, he still might not be off the hook. If it can be demonstrated that he found out later about an illegal payment but sought to cover it up, Trump might have committed one of the following felonies: a) being an accessory after the fact (18 U.S.C. 3), b) misprision of a felony (18 USC 4, especially by a public official), and c) obstruction of justice.
So even being completely oblivious to Cohen actions at first isn’t a perfect protection for Trump since he hasn’t as yet come forward to explain what he did know and when.
The GOP has argued that it’s completely “improper” for the DNC to have hired Perkins Coie, who in turn hired Fusion GPS who had contracted with Christopher Steele’s company Orbis Government Intelligence to produce his memos. If that money trail is “tainted” then trail from Vekselberg to Cohen through Columbus Nova and his own documented person attempts to end sanctions is just as bad if not worse.
