Was Michael Cohen Selling Access To Trump? Michael Avenatti Says He May Have [VIDEO]

Michael Cohen may have been selling access to his own client, President Donald Trump, according to several reports from this week.

Michael Cohen May Have Been Selling Access to Trump

On Wednesday, NBC News reported that an official from Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis said Cohen — Trump’s longtime personal lawyer and fixer — contacted the multinational firm after the 2016 election “promising access” to the president and his administration.

The official added that Novartis signed a one-year, $1.2 million deal with Cohen and that in November 2017, special counsel Robert Mueller demanded that the drug giant disclose information about the contract.

This all comes after it was revealed this week that Cohen received around $500,000 last year from Columbus Nova, a New York investment firm linked to a Russian oligarch named Viktor Vekselberg. Trump’s attorney’s company Essential Consultants also reportedly received $200,000 from AT&T, and $150,000 from Korea Aerospace Industries. AT&T said in a statement it also was seeking “insights” about the Trump administration as part of its contract with Cohen and his firm, a deal that ended in December 2017. More specifically, the telecommunications giant was hoping to obtain insight regarding how the administration might tackle policy matters about its industry.

This week, Michael Avenatti — the lawyer for porn star Stormy Daniels, whom Cohen paid $130,000 in hush money before the 2016 election — published a series of documents on Twitter that revealed the transactions between several major companies and Cohen’s firm.

Avenatti, who has said he doesn’t believe Trump will serve out his term in office, said the business records suggest Cohen was “selling access to the president of the United States.”

Cohen also reportedly used Essential Consultants to pay Daniels. According to NBC News, Cohen’s lawyer confessed to the payments from the four companies in a complaint letter filed with a federal judge. However, in that same letter, Cohen’s attorney claimed smaller transactions that Avenatti posted on Twitter were in fact associated with other individuals also named Michael Cohen.

A lawyer for Columbus Nova reportedly denied that Vekselberg — an oil and aluminum magnate — ever used the company as a way to funnel money to Cohen.

Comedian Stephen Colbert also mocked Cohen for the latest revelations on Wednesday night’s Late Show. 

Colbert said Cohen named his firm Essential Consultants LLC because “‘Porn star payoffs, incorporated’ was already taken.”

“You paid for ‘insights’ into this administration?” Colbert said, referring to AT&T confession of paying Cohen. “He’s a horny old racist who loves cheeseburgers more than his children. Two-hundred-thousand dollars, please!”