President Donald Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen approached a series of businesses in the aftermath of the 2016 election, offering corporations access to the new president, who happened to be his longtime client.
Novartis, a Swiss pharmaceutical firm; Korea Aerospace Industries, a South Korean defense contractor; and AT&T, the massive US telecom, all paid a Cohen-linked LLC named Essential Consulting more than $150,000 for services.
Reasons they gave for the payments varied from insight into the Trump administration to help with US accounting rules.
Other firms, including Ford and Uber, turned down Cohen’s offer to provide insight into the nascent Trump administration.
Michael Avenatti, the lawyer representing the adult-film star Stormy Daniels, revealed the initial wave of connections on Tuesday in a report that detailed Cohen’s finances. The Wall Street Journal reported Uber and Ford.
In addition to the payments from the companies, the report alleged that a $500,000 payment from Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg to a separate LLC shortly after the 2016 election helped pay alleged hush money to Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford.
We’ve run down the full list of companies that Cohen contacted, whether they paid Cohen, and what they said about the Trump lawyer below.