Michael Avenatti, the lawyer for adult film actress Stormy Daniels, claims to have evidence of a series of payments made to a bank account in Trump lawyer Michael Cohen’s name – including from a company linked to a Russian oligarch and two major corporations, AT&T and Novartis.
In a statement Tuesday, AT&T said that it had paid Cohen’s company, Essential Consulting, “to provide insights into understanding the new administration.”
CBS News has not been able to verify the other allegations by Avenatti. The New York Times said in a report Tuesday night that its own review of unspecified financial records “confirmed much of what was in Mr. Avenatti’s report.”
Avenatti, who has been aggressively pursuing Cohen and President Trump, laid out the claims in a 7-page memo Tuesday evening.
Cohen established a corporation called Essential Consultants LLC in October 2016, just weeks before the presidential election, according to Avenatti.
Essential Consultants then opened a bank account at First Republic Bank. It was from this account that a $130,000 payment to a representative of Stormy Daniels was made, according to Avenatti.
The question Avenatti claims to answer is where that and other money ultimately came from. He points to a series of alleged payments, including $500,000 from an investment firm linked to a Russian oligarch named Viktor Vekselberg, who was made a target of U.S. sanctions last month.
According to a statement given to the Washington Post, the investment firm, Columbus Nova, said it retained Cohen as a consultant “regarding potential sources of capital and potential investments in real estate and other ventures.” But it said Vekselberg was not involved with hiring or paying Cohen.
Avenatti also listed other payments: $399,920 from Novartis, a Swiss pharmaceutical company; $150,000 from Korea Aerospace; and $187,500 from Elliott Broidy, a former deputy finance chairman of the Republican National Committee. Those payments have not been confirmed by CBS News.
According to Avenatti, AT&T paid Cohen’s company a total of $200,000 over a series of four payments of $50,000, dating from 2017 to early this year, though AT&T did not confirm the figure.
Michael Cohen did not respond to CBS News’ requests for comment.
In a statement, AT&T said: “Essential Consulting was one of several firms we engaged in early 2017 to provide insights into understanding the new administration. They did no legal or lobbying work for us, and the contract ended in December 2017.”
AT&T announced a bid to acquire Time Warner in October 2016, a deal that Mr. Trump was quick to speak out against. The Department of Justice filed suit to block the merger in November 2017 – a ruling is due this June.
It’s unclear where Avenatti got these documents. Noah Shachtman, executive editor of The Daily Beast, said he had confirmed the payments. Shachtman told CBSN his source told him “how the f did Michael Avenatti find out about this?” Schachtman said he believed this would be a “big question.”
Shachtman said he has many more questions, including: “what did this oligarch’s company think they were getting for their hundreds of thousands of dollars? What did AT&T think they were getting for their hundreds of thousands of dollars? What did Novartis think they were getting for these hundreds of thousands of dollars? And what was Michael Cohen thinking taking all of this money? And did Trump know about any of this? We know that Trump put money into Cohen’s pocket when he paid out to Stormy Daniels — did any of this money flow the other way?”
The New York Times reported Tuesday that Vekselberg was stopped and questioned at an airport by investigators for pecial counsel Robert Mueller earlier this year. NYU law professor Ryan Goodman, who is a former special counsel for the Defense Department, told CBSN this seems to draw the dots back to Mueller’s investigation into Russian influence in the 2016 election.
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