Stormy Daniels' lawyer says he has information showing that President Donald Trump's longtime personal attorney received $500,000 from a company associated with a Russian billionaire within months of paying hush money to the porn star who claims a long-ago affair with Trump.
FILE - In this Thursday, April 26, 2018, file photo, Michael Avenatti, Stormy Daniels' attorney, talks to reporters outside of federal court in New York. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)
Lawyer Michael Avenatti also said hundreds of thousands of dollars streamed into Trump attorney Michael Cohen's account from companies, including pharmaceutical giant Novartis, AT&T and Korea Aerospace, with U.S. government business interests. Those three companies have confirmed the connection.
Avenatti isn't disclosing the source of his information or releasing documentation. But in a seven-page memo, Avenatti details what he says were wire transfers into and out of the account Cohen used to pay Daniels $130,000 in October 2016 to stay silent about her alleged tryst with Trump in 2006. He denies having an affair with Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford.
Financial documents reviewed Tuesday by The Associated Press appeared to back up Avenatti's report.
The memo says Viktor Vekselberg, a Russian billionaire, and his cousin "routed" eight payments totaling approximately $500,000 to Cohen's company, Essential Consultants, between January and August 2017. The reason for the payments was not immediately known.
Avenatti's memo says the deposits into the account controlled by Cohen were made by Columbus Nova, an American investment company headed by Vekselberg's cousin, Andrew Intrater, and affiliated with the Renova Group, which Vekselberg controls.
Andrey Shtorkh, a spokesman for Vekselberg and the Renova Group, said in a statement that "neither Victor Vekselberg nor Renova has ever had any contractual relationship" with Cohen or Essential Consultants.
This image released by NBC shows adult film actress Stormy Daniels during an appearance on "Saturday Night Live" in New York on Saturday, May 5, 2018. (Will Heath/NBC via AP)
He said questions about a relationship between Columbus Nova and Cohen would have to be answered by Intrater "because Columbus Nova is a company owned and managed by him."
Columbus Nova's lawyer, Richard Owens, said in a statement the company is "solely owned and controlled by Americans." He said that after Trump's inauguration in January 2017, the company hired Cohen as a business consultant "regarding potential sources of capital and potential investments in real estate and other ventures," but that it had nothing to do with Vekselberg.
"Neither Viktor Vekselberg nor anyone else, other than Columbus Nova's owners, were involved in the decision to hire Cohen or provided funding for his engagement," he said.
Cohen and his lawyer did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Cohen is under investigation by federal prosecutors in New York, but hasn't been charged.
At the time of the payments, there was an FBI counterintelligence investigation, which special counsel Robert Mueller took over last May, into Russian election interference and any possible coordination with Trump associates.
Vekselberg was targeted for U.S. sanctions by the Trump administration last month. He built his fortune, currently estimated by Forbes at $14.6 billion, by investing in the aluminum and oil industries. More recently, he has expanded his assets to include industrial equipment and high technology.
Eric Althoff, a spokesman for Novartis, a multinational pharmaceutical company, said it entered into a one-year agreement with Essential Consultants in February 2017 to focus on health care policy.
He said in an emailed statement Wednesday that Novartis hired Cohen for $100,000 a month, but determined after a single meeting with Cohen that he wouldn't be of use. Novartis still paid out the $1.2 million contract.
"The decision was taken not to engage further," he said, but the contract could not be terminated, so the payments continued.
Althoff said Novartis complied with requests for information about the payments from Mueller's investigators in November.
AT&T said in a statement that Essential Consultants was one of several firms it "engaged in early 2017 to provide insights into understanding the new administration."
Avenatti alleged that the company made four $50,000 payments to Cohen totaling $200,000 in late 2017 and early 2018.
AT&T said Cohen's company "did no legal or lobbying work for us, and the contract ended in December 2017." Cohen is not a registered lobbyist, according to public records.
Such a confidential relationship would not violate federal lobbying laws if Cohen did not seek to influence Trump on the companies' behalf. But hiring the president's personal attorney for advice on how to woo Trump would be highly unusual, especially given that Cohen was never formally involved in the campaign or Trump's administration.
Making the arrangement even stranger, the blue chip companies' payments to Cohen were routed to Essential Consultants, the company Cohen used to buy Daniels' silence about her alleged affair with Trump.
Trump's Justice Department has sued to block AT&T from an $85 billion merger with Time Warner, saying it would hurt competition and consumers would have to pay more to watch their favorite shows.
Korea Aerospace, which is alleged to have paid Cohen $150,000 in November 2017, confirmed it paid Cohen's company for a business deal.
A company spokesman in Seoul, who declined to be named citing office rules, said Korea Aerospace Industries had a contract with Essential Consultants for legal advice on accounting standards. The payment was made under a "legal" deal between the two, said the spokesperson, who refused to answer questions about the size or dates of any payments.
The Avenatti memo alleges the company paid Cohen $399,920 in late 2017 and early 2018 in four payments — each amounting to $99,980.
Trump had dinner with Novartis' soon-to-be CEO Vasant Narasimhan, along with other European executives, at the World Economic Forum in Davos shortly after the date of the final payment.
Larry Noble, senior director of the Campaign Legal Center, said there's nothing technically wrong with companies like Novartis and AT&T hiring people like Cohen to provide insight into the president's thinking. But he said the arrangement described by Avenatti "certainly doesn't look good."
"Why would you go to the president's private fixer?" he asked. "He's not known for policy and he's not in the administration. You're going to someone who can get you access and tell you about the person of the president. That's unusual."
ATLANTA (AP) — As Donald Trump seeks a return to the White House, criminal charges are piling up for the people who tried to help him stay there in 2020 by promoting false theories of voter fraud.
At least five states won in 2020 by President Joe Biden have investigated efforts to install slates of electors who would cast Electoral College votes for Trump despite his loss. Those slates were to be used by Trump allies in the House and Senate to justify delaying or blocking the certification of the election during the joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021, which was disrupted by pro-Trump rioters storming the Capitol.
Several of those charged or accused of involvement in election interference across the states are still involved in Republican politics today — including the lawyer overseeing “election integrity” for the Republican National Committee. And Trump, who faces federal charges in Washington and state charges in Georgia for his efforts to overturn Biden's win, frequently still claims the 2020 election was stolen, a falsehood echoed by many of his supporters.
Here's a look at the sprawling web of allegations, criminal charges and references to people in Trump’s orbit as unindicted co-conspirators.
The former president faces state charges in Georgia and federal charges in Washington over efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss and has been identified as an unindicted co-conspirator by investigators in Arizona and Michigan.
The Georgia charges came in a sprawling racketeering indictment in Fulton County in August that accused Trump and 18 others of participating in a wide-ranging scheme — that included the Republican elector effort — to illegally try to overturn his narrow loss in the state.
Trump is the only one charged in the federal indictment in Washington, but several close associates are recognizable as unindicted co-conspirators.
Trump has denied wrongdoing and the U.S. Supreme Court is weighing his arguments that he should be immune from prosecution. He has clinched his third straight Republican nomination for president.
Racketeering and conspiracy are among the charges the former New York mayor and Trump-aligned attorney faces in Georgia. In Arizona, the charges against him have not yet been made public.
In Michigan, a state investigator has testified that Giuliani is among several high-profile unindicted co-conspirators in a case against Republicans who signed elector certificates falsely saying Trump had won the state.
He's also an unindicted co-conspirator in the federal indictment in Washington, which cites comments he made at the “Stop the Steal” rally prior to the Capitol riot.
His spokesman, Ted Goodman, said in a statement Thursday that the “continued weaponization of our justice system should concern every American as it does permanent, irrevocable harm to the country.”
Bobb is a lawyer and conservative media personality charged in Arizona. She worked closely with Giuliani as he tried to persuade Arizona lawmakers to block the certification of the election results. She later raised money for a discredited audit of the election results in Maricopa County and covered the spectacle for One America News Network.
As lawyer for Trump, Bobb signed a letter stating that a “diligent search” for classified records had been conducted and that all such documents had been given back to the government before an FBI search revealed dozens of protected documents at his Mar-a-Lago residence.
She was recently tapped to oversee “election integrity” efforts at the Republican National Committee.
Asked about Bobb's role with the RNC, Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung accused Democrats of “weaponization of the legal system.”
A longtime Trump aide, Epshteyn was charged in Arizona, where a grand jury accused him of assisting with the fake electors plan.
He's a lawyer who has been by Trump's side for some of the former president's own court appearances, including Thursday in New York.
Epshteyn was a principal surrogate in the 2016 presidential campaign, making frequent television appearances. He briefly served as a senior White House adviser before becoming an analyst for Sinclair Broadcast Group.
Trump's White House chief is charged in the sweeping Georgia racketeering indictment, but not in connection with the Republican elector meeting. Among other things, he participated in a January 2021 phone call between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger during which the then-president urged the elections official to help “find” the votes needed to overturn his narrow loss in the state.
Meadows' charges in Arizona are not publicly known. He was also identified by the Michigan state investigator as an unindicted co-conspirator.
His attorney, George Terwilliger, referred to Wednesday's indictment in Arizona as a “blatantly political and politicized accusation and will be contested and defeated.”
Meadows now works for the Conservative Policy Institute, a Washington think tank that describes his role as leading “strategic initiatives on Capitol Hill, with other partner organizations, and with grassroots activists across the country.”
A former dean of Chapman University’s law school in Southern California, Eastman wrote a memo arguing that Trump could remain in power if then-Vice President Mike Pence overturned the results of the electoral certification during a joint session of Congress using the slates of Republican electors from the battleground states.
The charges against him in Georgia include racketeering and conspiracy, while the Arizona charges have not been made public. He's also named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the federal indictment, which quotes his remarks at the Jan. 6, 2021, “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington.
He has pleaded not guilty to the charges in Georgia and his lawyer Charles Burnham said he's innocent of the charges in Arizona.
Ellis was charged in the Georgia indictment after she appeared with Giuliani at a December 2020 hearing hosted by state Republican lawmakers at the Georgia Capitol during which false allegations of election fraud were made. She pleaded guilty in October to one felony count of aiding and abetting false statements and writings after reaching a deal with prosecutors. She wasn't charged in connection with the Republican electors efforts in Georgia.
It wasn't immediately clear whether she had a lawyer in Arizona who could comment on charges she faces there, which have not yet been made public.
A Trump campaign staffer and onetime White House aide, Roman was charged with several conspiracy counts related to the Republican elector meeting and the filing of the elector certificate in Georgia. He was also charged in Arizona.
Roman has pleaded not guilty to the charges in Georgia. It wasn't immediately clear whether he had a lawyer in Arizona yet.
Chesebro, a lawyer, worked with Republicans in multiple swing states to coordinate and execute the Trump elector plan. He was charged with racketeering and several conspiracy counts in relation to that work in Georgia and in October reached a deal with prosecutors to plead guilty to one felony charge of conspiracy to commit filing false documents.
Chesebro is an unindicted co-conspirator in Trump's federal election indictment, which says he "assisted in devising and attempting to implement a plan to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors to obstruct the certification proceeding.”
He was also named in the Wisconsin civil lawsuit, and when he turned over documents to settle that suit he didn't admit liability but promised never to participate in similar efforts.
A lawyer and unflinching Trump ally, Powell was charged with racketeering and conspiracy charges in Georgia but was not implicated in the elector scheme. The Fulton County indictment accused her of participating in an unauthorized breach of elections equipment in a rural Georgia county elections office. She pleaded guilty in October to six misdemeanors accusing her of conspiring to intentionally interfere with the performance of election duties after reaching a deal with prosecutors.
She's an unindicted co-conspirator in the federal election interference case, where prosecutors say she filed a lawsuit in Georgia that amplified false or unsupported claims of election fraud.
Clark was a U.S. Justice Department official who championed Trump’s false claims of election fraud. He was charged in Georgia with racketeering and criminal attempt to commit false statements and writings after he presented colleagues with a draft letter pushing Georgia officials to convene a special legislative session on the election results.
He has pleaded not guilty to the charges in Georgia.
He was also one of the unindicted co-conspirators in the federal election indictment against Trump.
In addition to Arizona, criminal charges have been filed against Republicans who presented themselves as electors in Michigan, Georgia and Nevada. Wisconsin Republicans who signed elector certificates reached a settlement in a civil lawsuit, admitting their actions were part of an effort to overturn Biden’s victory. No charges have been filed in Pennsylvania or New Mexico, with the attorney general in the latter saying there’s no avenue for prosecution under state law.
Associated Press writer Jonathan J. Cooper in Phoenix contributed to this report.
FILE - Mark Meadows speaks with reporters at the White House, Oct. 21, 2020, in Washington. Meadows, chief of staff for former President Donald Trump, was among those indicted Wednesday, April 24, 2024, in an Arizona election interference case. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)
FILE - Former Mayor of New York Rudy Giuliani speaks during a news conference outside the federal courthouse in Washington, Dec. 15, 2023. Guiliani, a lawyer for former President Donald Trump, was among those indicted Wednesday, April 24, 2024, in an Arizona election interference case.(AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)
Former President Donald Trump speaks to members of the media at Manhattan criminal court in New York, Thursday, April 25, 2024. (Jeenah Moon/Pool Photo via AP)
