A story is beginning to emerge on Michael Cohen’s post-election business strategy. He was close to Donald Trump but he never held an official title with the campaign and he was not invited to work at the White House with his longtime client, Donald Trump. But what Cohen did do, according to a multitude of media reports, was to take advantage of his longtime relationship with the new president. Cohen knew that many powerful people would be scrambling to get close to the President-elect and as Trump’s personal lawyer, he sought to capitalize as much as he could.
CNN reports that after the election, Cohen began an aggressive campaign to woo potential clients by advertising his connection to the President of the United States. The approach worked; Cohen received hundreds of thousands of dollars from numerous people and organizations in the months after the election.
“I don’t know who’s been representing you, but you should fire them all. I’m the guy you should hire. I’m closest to the President. I’m his personal lawyer,” is how CNN described Cohen’s pitch.
One of the lucrative deals Cohen struck after Trump was elected was with the Big Pharma company Novartis. After the first meeting, company officials debated whether or not Cohen would be able to give them the access to the president they wanted, but were anxious to back out because of Cohen’s perceived influence. So while they held no other meetings with him, they continued to pay him $100,000/month for a year, ultimately worth $1.2 million.
The CEO of Novartis told employees the drug giant “made a mistake” paying Michael Cohen $1.2 million https://t.co/M1BCU8H9XU
— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) May 10, 2018
AT&T was also looking to Cohen to get “insights” into the new President for its Time Warner merger. The company paid Cohen $200,000 in 2017 but are still fighting with the Justice Department over the merger.
Cohen’s decade-long relationship with Trump has helped him collect a tidy sum this year, at least $2.35 million from corporate clients alone following the election. “I’m crushing it,” the lawyer bragged last summer.
On Tuesday, Stormy Daniels’ attorney Michael Avennati released a dossier full of corporate payments allegedly made to Cohen including the Novartis deal, the AT&T deal and a $500,000 payment from an investment firm connected to Viktor Vekselberg, a prominent Russian oligarch.
“If Michael Cohen, the personal attorney to the president, was selling access to the highest office in the land, without complying with the appropriate rules and regulations, serious consequences should result” Michael Avennati, Stormy Daniels’ lawyer told Politico.
Days after this explosive news, many tax lawyers are wondering how Avennati could have obtained Cohen’s bank records. The Treasury Department is investigating the leak.
Meanwhile, suspicion is brewing that Michael Cohen’s corporate dealings could be considered a type of “lobbying”. The Post says that if “Cohen promised specific government actions in exchange for payments, [it] could cause him legal trouble.”