It took a lot of mind numbing digging for the researcher tasked with the job to sort through all those Delaware records to locate a certain Michael Cohen LLC by the name of Essential Consultants. But the job was undertaken and the vehicle by which Stormy Daniels/Stephanie Clifford was paid 130k just before the 2016 election to keep silent about her relationship with David Dennison/Donald Trump was identified. More importantly it was reported on.
Like others I figured that the news at the time noting it had been specifically created in order to “facilitate” (Michael Cohen’s term if you remember) the payment meant that it was one of who knows how many such shell corporations get created for a single purpose. IOW I accepted the notion that while thousands of shell companies like Essential Consultants get created every year to mask who’s paying/getting money from whom that this particular shell company was a “one off.” Sure, some such companies see a lot of money flow through them but my understanding is that the bulk of them get limited use. I could be wrong, but I’ve had the sense that lots of folks who create & use such entities don’t usually bother to close them when they are done using them. Having countless shell companies helps hide any specific one. IOW, I have the sense there’s some sort of “understanding” among those who create/use these things that it’s in everyone’s interest to have as many of them as possible to ensure anyone wanting to find and scrutinize a specific one has to slog through a whole lot of nothing/dead ends. It may not dissuade a really determined prosecutor but the time to do a search can and surely has discourage many an investigator.
I don’t recall exactly when and on what show but I recall a journalist who’d written about the creation of Essential Consultants, LLC describing how much work it took just to find the damned thing in the State of Delaware’s records. Anyway it made for lots of discussion then and ever since, but the general impression in my mind and I believe most people’s was that this was just another shell company created for a specific purpose, because as the reporting at the time noted Cohen had another shell company but didn’t want to use it for this particular matter. That merely reinforced my perception that the Daniels/Clifford payment was the first and last transaction that went through Essential Consultants. I’ll be most of you reading this thought the same.
My how perceptions have changed in the last few days!
I won’t detail all we’ve learned as it’s amply covered elsewhere including on this site. But something started percolating in my head during the past couple of hours. I wanted to start at the beginning and did a web search to try and figure out who found the Essential Consultants shell company in the first place. I could be wrong about it being the WSJ, but they have the staff resources to devote to the grinding, slog through tens of thousands of records it took to dig it out. Regardless, the piece I found ( www.wsj.com/... ) yielded the answer to the question I had — what was the name of the LLC Michael Cohen used before creating Essential Consultants? FYI, the story in the link (published on Jan. 18 of this year) notes there was another matter related to Essential Consultants. It was used when Cohen joined the board of a company near Richmond, VA by the name of HealthcarePays Network, LLC which “focuses on finding detecting fraudulent health-care billings” according to the consulting agreement. I think it’s safe to assume Cohen knows something about fraud at least, but I digress.
What I had been looking for was the name of the shell company Cohen decided he didn’t want to use for the Daniels/Clifford payment. It was Resolution Consultants, LLC. Again, I assumed that given the nature of things with Daniels having been talking to news outlets Cohen wanted a brand new company that would take time (and lots of effort) to trace for the porn star payoff. That in and of itself IMHO adds to the narrative the whole payoff was related to the election. Cohen probably figured that even if someone from one of the outlets started looking around they’d never find his new shell company until well after the election and even Inauguration if Trump won. For once he was right.
Now, you might be asking a question of your own which is why I wanted to know about the shell company Cohen didn’t want to use in October of 2016? Or since folks here tend to be pretty smart they already know and have been wondering the same thing I did. For those who haven’t made the leap it’s really quite simple. Since as we’ve learned many millions of dollars have flowed into Essential Consultants subsequent to that 130k pass through for the Daniels/Clifford NDA, what’s the financial history of the other LLC (Resolution Consultants) that Cohen didn’t want to use?
I for one find that an interesting question, and I hope the SDNY and/or Mueller’s team have been way ahead of me/us on that point. I even wonder how many other LLCs they might have found out about and have been investigating. However, what I learned earlier tonight about Resolution Consultants is that two minutes after creating Essential Consultants Cohen closed it’s predecessor Resolution Consultants!
It’s almost like he was worried that someone might eventually start digging around his old shell company if one of those news outlets Daniels/Clifford had been talking with learned about the 2011 story in In Touch magazine and started digging. Keep in mind that this shell company was up and running during 2016. Just how long it had been in operation I don’t know. But I’m willing to bet there are people who do — prosecutors in the SDNY and on Mueller’s team. Granted, this is pure speculation on my part but I don’t think it’s a wild-assed guess to think that given all the millions sloshing around in Essential Consultants AFTER the election that there are some interesting transactions that were run through its predecessor Resolution Consultants.
During the 2016 campaign.
Now, this one is admittedly a stretch since only McClatchy (an outlet I trust although I recognize not everyone does) has said there are sources that say Cohen did in fact make a quick trip to Prague in the late summer/early fall of 2016. If you recall that element of the Steele dossier the trip Steele’s sources said Cohen took was for the purpose of him arranging payment for services to hackers.
When you think about that, and Cohen suddenly deciding to create a whole new shell company to pay off a porn star who media outlets knew might have a story to tell that could affect the election it’s a stretch perhaps, but IMHO not a huge one to think Cohen might have decided to shut down Resolution Consultants for a rather important reason. Keep in mind that at the time there was no public knowledge of the Steele dossier and no way of knowing that there would be a Special Counsel, much less one like Bobby Three Sticks that might wind up crawling up his ass. What he did know because Trump probably told him was that the FBI had opened a counter-intelligence investigation into Russian meddling in the election. As a major Party Presidential candidate Trump would have been briefed in very general terms on the existence of such an investigation.
So, with a porn star who’d been in contact with news outlets and apparently ready to spill the beans with a coup de gras on top of the Access Hollywood story a whole new shell company was a good idea. And for good measure “just in case” shutting down the old one was a good idea too because if anyone learned about the Daniels/Clifford payoff they’d likely focus on the account that paid her and not so much on the one Cohen used before that.
Well, that might nor might not pan out. But I still think it’s a safe bet that given what we already know (and there’s apparently more to come) about Essential Consultant’s “interesting” transactions there are probably some juicy ones in the records of its predecessor Resolution Consultants.
Stay tuned.