Dial C for Cohen

Sean Rameswaram: This is really a pretty small scooter for so many people. Yeah, let's invite a third person onto it. Should we? We find somebody on the street over here? Let's add a wrinkle to this experience.

Noel King: Dear listener, I'll bet you're wondering if we're actually two people on an electric scooter right now. We're faking this. We are two people on an electric scooter. Dear listener, we promise. And we do not advocate for this. No. However, we could mention, dear listener, that you can go to mattressfirm.com slash podcast to find a great deal on mattresses.

Sean Rameswaram: So, Noam, what do you say? What do you know? You know, Sean, D.C. is a small town. Word gets around. Yeah, so what have you been hearing? Can you keep a secret? Does a sack of potatoes cost a nickel?

Noel King: Been hearing rumors about this Michael Cohen cat. Something about a phone company? A Russian oligarch? Fabergé eggs? Fabergé eggs? Yeah, that's right, see? I'm scrambling for answers here. Huh.

Sean Rameswaram: This sounds like a job for Prokop. Cop? I thought you were a PI. No, no, I'm Andrew Prokop, politics reporter over at Vox.

Andrew Prokop: The story really begins in October 2016. Donald Trump, who's running for president at the time, this is a few days before the election, his lawyer, Michael Cohen, sets up a shell company called Essential Consultants, LLC. Essential Consultants. Cohen sets up this shell company because there's a porn star named Stormy Daniels. Stormy. threatening to come forward with a claim that several years ago she had a sexual encounter with Donald Trump. Cohen wants to hush her up, so naturally he makes a deal, a nondisclosure agreement, in which Stormy Daniels would be paid $130,000. N-D-A. But Cohen didn't want his own name on this paperwork. He basically wanted the money to go through a separate entity that would be a little more difficult to trace. So he set up Essential Consultants. Essential Consultants. And he sent the $130,000 through Essential Consultants, LLC, to Stormy Daniels' lawyer. And that's the hush money. Hush.

Sean Rameswaram: This came out in January 2018. But what we only learned this week is that that's not all essential consultants did. There's more. After Trump won the election, Cohen continued to use this same shell company for all sorts of other transactions. The person who first revealed this is actually Stormy's lawyer, Michael Avenatti.

Michael Avenatti: I'm joined now by Michael Avenatti, who is the lawyer for Stormy Daniels. Thank you for being here.

Andrew Prokop: He's trying to get the nondisclosure agreement struck down in court so that Stormy Daniels will be free to talk about her sexual encounter with Trump without worrying about being sued by him. He's been everywhere in the media waging what seems to be like a PR war against Donald Trump and Michael Cohen. He picked the wrong fixer. He trusted too many personal secrets with Michael Cohen. And I think Michael Cohen is going to fold like a cheap deck of cards on Mr. Trump and the results are going to be very, very bad.

Sean Rameswaram: Somehow we don't know exactly how he got a hold of a lot of information about what Essential Consultants LLC was up to in 2017 and early 2018 He released on Twitter Tuesday night a PDF document from what he calls Project Sunlight The document revealed that major companies were also paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to essential consultants. Essential consultants. Companies that are household names like AT&T. The pharmaceutical company Novartis.

Andrew Prokop: We're not just taking Stormy Daniels' lawyer's word for this. These companies have since come forward and confirmed that they paid Michael Cohen's essential consultants all this money. Novartis now says that they sent him $1.2 million. Then there's also Korea Aerospace Industries. Korea. Gave him a hefty payment. And then there's another company that's much less well-known. It's a company called Columbus Nova. Nova. It's important because it's closely tied to a Russian billionaire oligarch named Victor Vexelberg. Vexelberg. Vexelberg made a fortune in aluminum. His fortune is currently valued at about $14 billion.

Sean Rameswaram: One weird little side note is that Vexelberg bought nine Fabergé eggs from the Forbes family for about $100 million and repatriated them back to Russia. And this was viewed by many as an attempt to please Putin by bringing this Russian art treasure back into the country.

Andrew Prokop: So what we've learned, basically, is that Donald Trump's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, was secretly paid half a million dollars by a company that's closely tied to a Russian oligarch while Trump is president, while the Russia investigation is already up and running. President Trump himself hasn't yet commented on any of this. His new lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, says that he asked Trump about it and Trump said that he had no idea about any of this. But also on Wednesday, several of the companies that made these payments to Cohen were asked, what did Michael Cohen do for them that deserved so much money? And their answers were pretty funny.

Sean Rameswaram: First off, the Russian oligarch tied company, Columbus Nova, they basically said we hired him to advise us on real estate. Michael Cohen is actually a pretty high dollar real estate player, but it seems a little questionable whether this Russian oligarch tied company was really paying him for real estate tips. The CEO of the company also donated $250,000 to Trump's inauguration.

Andrew Prokop: Then there's Novartis. The Swiss pharmaceutical company released a statement saying that they hired Cohen to advise them on how Trump might approach certain U.S. health care policy matters. According to Novartis, they had a meeting with him and they claim that they swiftly realized he was totally useless, basically. They gave Michael Cohen $1.2 million for a single meeting, chef. Things clearly didn't work out. But then you have anonymous Novartis officials telling people that what they really hired Cohen for was that he promised access to the Trump administration.

Sean Rameswaram: So AT&T was asked about this, too. Last night, AT&T did not dispute the transaction, saying. Essential Consultants was one of several firms we engaged in early 2017 to provide insights into understanding the new administration. Yes, Michael Cohen was hired for his insights. Finally perhaps the strangest explanation of all is from Korea Aerospace Industries This is the firm that's pursuing a big contract with the U.S. Air Force. Korea Aerospace Industries received legal advice on the cost accounting standards regulation from Essential Consultants, LLC, through a contracted deal. Apparently, Cohen is a healthcare policy wonk. He's an accounting genius, and he has a lot of great insights. Probably the real thing behind all this is that they wanted access. At least, let's hope that's all it is.

Sean Rameswaram: Coming up on Today Explained, how this whole Cohen mess ties into the Mueller investigation. Pardon us, coming through! Just two grown-ups. On a scooter. An electric scooter, one with a microphone. Ooh, so what I'm learning right now is the motorized scooters don't do so well with two dudes on them uphill. Yeah, we're moving real slow. But you know what? That motorcycle has to stop at this red light and we're just hopping on the sidewalk again. Woo! Excuse me, sir. Thank you very much. Slow that car down. Yeah, cars. Where we're going, we don't need cars. Because we motorized scooters. So, Sean, where are we headed right now? Mattress firm, ride or die? Yeah, we're riding against traffic, two on a scooter right now, while recording a mattress ad. Yeah, yeah. Is that legal? I don't know, and I would not recommend it to our audience, but it is what we're doing.

Sean Rameswaram: Today, today explained. Is this like a run-of-the-mill shell company or something bigger going on here? Apparently $4.4 million went through this company, and we only have somewhere over $1 million accounted for at this point. So there's still a lot of questions about who was paying Michael Cohen and what he did for them, basically, and who he might have been paying through this company. Who else might we find lingering about in Michael Cohen's accounts and papers? What else is coming? Do we know? No, we have no idea. If you had told me on Tuesday morning that we would soon learn that AT&T, Novartis, and a Korean aerospace company and a company tied to a Russian oligarch were all secretly paying Michael Cohen last year while Donald Trump was president, I would have said, that's totally wild. And now that's been confirmed. All of the companies involved have confirmed making these payments. And so the question is, what's next? What's the next shoe to drop?

Andrew Prokop: Did Robert Mueller know about all this stuff or is this going to be news to him? Mueller has been aware of and asking questions about this money that went into Cohen's account for at least six months. Novartis has said that lawyers working for Mueller contacted them with questions back in November 2017. But it seems that at some point while looking into this, Mueller decided to hand off a lot of the investigation into Cohen. He referred it to the U.S. Attorney's Office based in Manhattan. And so they're the ones who carried out those raids where they seized so many of Cohen's documents and devices and so on. It's not entirely clear just how closely this investigation and the raids itself are tied to what Mueller investigating Russian collusion But there are also signs that Mueller hasn't given up everything that relates to Cohen He still questioned Viktor Vexelberg at the airport about these payments to Cohen. We had reports shortly before the raids that Mueller was questioning people about various allegations about Cohen and collusion. And it doesn't seem like Mueller has completely handed over the Cohen probe.

Sean Rameswaram: Is this a major moment for the Mueller investigation, the Russia probe? Well, it doesn't change anything for Mueller because he's known about this for some time. I think the last major development was back in February when he indicted 13 different Russians and three Russian companies for propaganda. And then a week after that, he got Rick Gates to flip on Paul Manafort. And since then, we've basically been waiting for the next shoe to drop. You know, Mueller runs a very tight ship, and he's not in the habit of tipping off the media about what his next move is going to be. And so it sure seems like there are other indictments coming. He's had these three cooperating witnesses, George Papadopoulos, Michael Flynn, and now Rick Gates, for several months now. They've been giving him information. His team has been following up those leads, questioning other people, sending out other subpoenas. Trump's business got a subpoena a couple months ago related to its dealings with Russia. That threat of the investigation hasn't resulted in any charges yet. And there are all sorts of other angles, too, that we've heard he's been asking about secret meeting in the Seychelles and Jared Kushner's businesses. You know, who knows what it will be? So there's a chance that Robert Mueller knows all of that $4.4 million, where it came from, where it went. He's probably known that for several months now.

Sean Rameswaram: Wow. So we're waiting to see what Mueller does next and also that separate probe by the U.S. attorney in Manhattan into Cohen. A lot of people expect it will eventually end up in some charges. It's not clear what those charges would be. People mentioned campaign finance. I do think there are more signs that this is a bigger kind of influence peddling and corruption scandal than it initially seemed. It's basically shady as hell. And we're probably only at the tip of the iceberg.

Sean Rameswaram: Andrew Prokop. He's a senior politics reporter at Vox. I'm Sean Ramisverum. This is Today Explained. Irene Noguchi is our executive producer. Bridget McCarthy is our editor. Noam Hassenfeld produces. Christina Anemichan sings. Luke Vanderplug rides scooters. and Afim Shapiro's our engineer. It's his birthday tomorrow. Happy birthday, buddy.

Sean Rameswaram: Paige Flager lent a hand this week, and you can lend a hand anytime by rating and reviewing our show on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. Today Explained is produced in association with Stitcher, and we're part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Now see here, kids. You can follow Today Explained on Twitter at today underscore explained.

Sean Rameswaram: We're close. I can feel it. I can sense mattress firms. Did you know that about me? Is that one of the superpowers you get? Yeah, it's my sixth sense. Nice. Approaching a mattress firm. Hey, look at that! Oh, wait, it's right there! Hey, mattress firm! We're at a mattress firm! Nice dismount. Nice, thank you. Really good. So, where are we right now? You just kicked me in the back of the foot. Did I really? I feel like a million bucks. Ooh, Slurpees. Should we get a Slurpee first? Ah, I don't know. I'm really feeling a mattress. Okay, let's go. Let's do it. Thank you.