{"id":65111,"date":"2018-05-09T04:41:56","date_gmt":"2018-05-09T04:41:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/?p=65111"},"modified":"2018-05-09T04:41:56","modified_gmt":"2018-05-09T04:41:56","slug":"trumps-attorney-michael-cohen-was-hired-by-u-s-affiliate-of-russian-company","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/news\/trumps-attorney-michael-cohen-was-hired-by-u-s-affiliate-of-russian-company.html","title":{"rendered":"Trump’s attorney Michael Cohen was hired by U.S. affiliate of Russian company"},"content":{"rendered":"

Trump’s attorney Michael Cohen was hired by U.S. affiliate of Russian company<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

President Trump\u2019s personal attorney Michael Cohen was hired last year by the U.S.-based affiliate of a Russian business magnate who attended Trump\u2019s inauguration and was recently sanctioned by the U.S. government, the company said Tuesday.<\/span><\/p>\n

The New York investment firm Columbus Nova said it retained Cohen as a consultant \u201cregarding potential sources of capital and potential investments in real estate and other ventures.\u201d Though Columbus Nova has been described in federal regulatory filings as an affiliate of the Renova Group, founded by Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg, the company said Vekselberg was not involved with hiring or paying Cohen.<\/span><\/p>\n

The company\u2019s confirmation came after Michael Avenatti, a lawyer for adult-film actress Stormy Daniels, circulated on Twitter a document purporting to show a detailed accounting of wire transfers made to Essential Consultants, a company established by Cohen in October 2016.<\/span><\/p>\n

The payments listed in the document began in the months after Cohen paid $130,000 to Daniels just before the November 2016 election, as part of an agreement that required her to not speak publicly about an affair she says she had with Trump a decade earlier.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the document, Avenatti claims that Cohen received $500,000 from Columbus Nova between January 2017 and August 2017.<\/span><\/p>\n

Avenatti did not provide supporting documentation for his claims, though Columbus Nova and AT&T, another company named in the document, both released statements in the hours after Avenatti\u2019s disclosure confirming that they had business relationships with Cohen.<\/span><\/p>\n

Avenatti alleged that Vekselberg might have provided funds that \u201creplenished the account\u201d following Cohen\u2019s payments to Daniels. In a statement, a spokesman for Vekselberg said neither the Russian billionaire nor the Renova Group has any \u201ccontractual relationship\u201d with Cohen.<\/span><\/p>\n

The payments from Columbus Nova point to a potential new financial tie between the president\u2019s personal lawyer and a U.S. representative of a key Russian figure. Vekselberg, who is close to Russian President Vladi\u00admir Putin, was one of two dozen Russian businessmen and government officials sanctioned in April as part of the U.S. response to the poisoning of an ex-Russian intelligence officer in London.<\/span><\/p>\n

Columbus Nova hired Cohen as U.S. investigators were ramping up their inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 election. The chief executive of the U.S. affiliate is Vekselberg\u2019s cousin, Andrew Intrater, a U.S. citizen who donated $250,000 to Trump\u2019s inauguration, and made additional contributions to a Trump campaign committee and to the Republican National Committee.<\/span><\/p>\n

More broadly, the revelations show that companies with business interests before the U.S. government hired Cohen, a longtime Trump associate, by paying him through Essential Consultants, which he also used to pay Daniels before the election.<\/span><\/p>\n

The document from Avenatti says AT&T paid Cohen $50,000 a month for four months starting in October 2017, just weeks before Trump\u2019s Justice Department filed suit to block AT&T\u2019s acquisition of Time Warner.<\/span><\/p>\n

A spokesman for AT&T confirmed that the company engaged Essential Consultants, a company formed by Cohen in early 2017 \u201cto provide insights into understanding the new administration.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThey did no legal or lobbying work for us, and the contract ended in December 2017,\u201d the spokesman added.<\/span><\/p>\n

Cohen was receiving payments from Columbus Nova during the same months that Trump attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani has said Trump was paying Cohen $35,000 a month in legal fees.<\/span><\/p>\n

Giuliani has said Trump\u2019s money served as a reimbursement for the funds Cohen provided to Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford.<\/span><\/p>\n

Stephen Ryan, a lawyer for Cohen, did not respond to requests for comment.<\/span><\/p>\n

Cohen\u2019s finances are of intense interest to federal authorities in New York, who last month served search warrants on his home, office and hotel room, gathering documents related to the Daniels payments as well as Cohen\u2019s personal businesses.<\/span><\/p>\n

Cohen\u2019s lawyers have fought in court to restrict prosectors\u2019 access to the material seized in those raids. As part of that legal fight, they told a judge that in 2017, Cohen had three legal clients and seven clients to whom he provided \u201cstrategic advice and business consulting.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Avenatti\u2019s document might provide a road map to those clients. He claims that Cohen also received payments from the drug company Novartis Investments and Korea Aerospace Industries. Each has important business considerations with the U.S. government.<\/span><\/p>\n

Shortly after the last transaction from Novartis identified by Avenatti, in January, Trump took a meeting with executives including the incoming CEO of Novartis, Vas Narasimhan, during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.<\/span><\/p>\n

A Novartis spokesman said any agreements with Essential Consultants took place before the new CEO took over in February and have since expired.<\/span><\/p>\n

Representatives for Korea Aerospace did not respond to a request for comment. The company is in contention for a multibillion-dollar joint contract with Lockheed Martin to produce jet trainers for the U.S. Air Force.<\/span><\/p>\n

Vekselberg is a Russian billionaire who regularly participates in gatherings of Russian business leaders with Putin and sometimes meets one on one with the Russian president, according to news accounts and people familiar with his role.<\/span><\/p>\n

In March 2017, the two sat down to discuss infrastructure projects, according to Russian state news reports. Vekselberg funds several critically important prestige projects, including Skolkovo, the business incubator touted as Russia\u2019s answer to Silicon Valley.<\/span><\/p>\n

Vekselberg\u2019s spokesman Andrey Shtorkh confirmed to The Washington Post in January that Vekselberg had attended Trump\u2019s inauguration as a guest of one of his American business partners.<\/span><\/p>\n

A person familiar with the inauguration said the partner was Intrater, and the New York Times has reported that Intrater and Vekselberg have both been interviewed by prosecutors working for special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.<\/span><\/p>\n

Two people familiar with Mueller\u2019s probe told The Post that the special counsel is investigating whether foreign money helped fund Trump\u2019s inauguration. By law, only U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents can donate to a U.S. inaugural committee.<\/span><\/p>\n

In addition to Intrater\u2019s donation to Trump\u2019s inauguration, an additional $1 million to support the inauguration came from Access Industries, which was founded by Leonard Blavatnik, a Soviet-born American British billionaire who is a longtime friend and business associate of Vekselberg.<\/span><\/p>\n

Shtorkh told The Post in January that Vekselberg had met the past three U.S. presidents as part of his efforts to expand Russia\u2019s international economic relations but that this was the first time the magnate attended a presidential inauguration.<\/span><\/p>\n

Photographs also show that Vekselberg attended a December 2015 dinner in Moscow to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Russian television network RT. Another attendee of the dinner was former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, who was seated next to Putin.<\/span><\/p>\n

Source:-https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/politics\/trumps-attorney-michael-cohen-was-hired-by-us-affiliate-of-russian-company\/2018\/05\/08\/12a218c8-52f6-11e8-abd8-265bd07a9859_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.1354d8882e56<\/span><\/p>\n

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