Category Archive

Trump has a choice to make, and today we find out that choice. Normally, a politician completing a financial disclosure form is not worthy of news. But today, this year, with Trump — it is. Today is the deadline for President Trump to file his financial disclosure form for 2017. That fact may seem trivially bureaucratic, but lurking at its core is … Read More

Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s controversial “fixer,” is in an unfortunate spot. Last week, new details came into sharper focus showing that the New York attorney received undisclosed lobbying payments – through a shell company used to pay hush money to a porn star – from corporate giants hoping to influence his client in the Oval Office. The Wall Street Journal took a deeper … Read More

How Novartis came to give 1.2 million to Michael Cohen: The curious relationship between one of the world’s biggest drug makers and President Trump’s personal lawyer began early last year when Michael Cohen, a longtime fixer for the president, reached out to Novartis’s then-chief executive officer Joe Jimenez, promising help gaining access to Trump and influential officials in the new administration, according to … Read More

Thanks to Stormy Daniels’s attorney, Michael Avenatti, we learned last night that Michael Cohen’s shell company, Essential Consultants LLC, whose existence came to light as the vehicle for the hush money payments to Daniels, also had considerable income from Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg as well as corporations including AT&T and Novartis. Billionaire Viktor Vekselberg chairs a company called the Renova Group, and a US-based subsidiary of that company sent hundreds of thousands of dollars … Read More

From an anonymous person “steeped in anti-corruption enforcement (both domestic and foreign) on the prosecution and defense side”: As we already know, Michael Cohen is the prototypical fixer or bagman…. The bagman’s job is to get bribe money to people while insulating and giving deniability to the ultimate payor of the bribe. Having a dirty lawyer as a bagman provides a … Read More

Let’s start with yesterday afternoon, when Giuliani did a little clean-up on aisle five. Trump’s most visible attorney was back on the air on Wednesday to “clarify” what he said the previous two days by throwing over them a blanket claim of ignorance. President Donald Trump only recently found out that he reimbursed his personal attorney, Michael Cohen, for a $130,000 nondisclosure agreement … Read More

Rudy Giuliani on Sean Hannity’s show last night turned into a bombshell.  It was a very strange interview for Trump’s new lawyer.  The former head of the SDNY and New York mayor talked in a Fox News-y kind of way, but not like a lawyer well-versed in the issues. He called Hillary a “criminal”, etc. He said that the public … Read More