Narrative Collapse: Novartis Says It Paid Cohen More Than $1 Million for Advice He Couldn’t Provide
by John Carney
9 May 2018

The notion that payments to his personal lawyer might implicate President Donald Trump in wrongdoing was dealt a blow Wednesday by drug giant Novartis’ admission it received nothing for the more than $1 million paid to Michael Cohen.

CNBC reports:

Zitat

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Novartis said it signed a one-year contract with Cohen’s shell company, Essential Consultants, for $100,000 per month in February 2017, shortly after Trump was inaugurated as president.

Novartis said it believed Cohen “could advise the company as to how the Trump administration might approach certain U.S. health-care policy matters, including the Affordable Care Act.”

But just a month after signing the deal, Novartis executives had their first meeting with Cohen, and afterward “determined that Michael Cohen and Essentials Consultants would be unable to provide the services that Novartis had anticipated.”

But Novartis kept paying Cohen.

“As the contract, unfortunately, could only be terminated for cause, payments continued to be made until the contract expired by its own terms in February 2018,” Novartis said.

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As Breitbart News observed Wednesday morning, instead of being a case of a corrupt quid pro quo, this appears to be a case of quid pro no. That is, the companies alleged to have made payments to Cohen do not appear to have bought favor policies from the administration. They do not even appear to have received information about the Trump administration’s thinking on policy matters.

At worst, it appears Cohen may have held himself out as an expert on Trump’s thinking but his clients discovered his expertise was lacking–or that they were unable to use that expertise to benefit their interests.

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/...ouldnt-provide/


Quid Pro No? Trump Administration Sued AT&T After Payments to Trump Lawyer Cohen
by John Carney
9 May 2018

The Trump administration sued AT&T to block its acquisition of Time Warner after the telecommunications giant had made payments to a company created by Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer.

AT&T said it made payments to Mr. Cohen’s company, Essential Consultants LLC, in 2017 for “insights” into the administration. It says it ended the relationship in December 2017, shortly after the Justice Department sued the company on November 20, 2017 to block the merger.

The payments were first revealed in a memo released by Michael Avenatti, a lawyer for Stephanie Clifford, the given name of the porn actress called Stormy Daniels. It is unclear how Avenatti learned of the payments. AT&T confirmed the payments to CNBC and the Wall Street Journal.

“Essential Consultants was one of several firms we engaged in early 2017 to provide insights into understanding the new administration,“ the company said in a statement. ”They did no legal or lobbying work for us, and the contract ended in December 2017.

The Avenatti memo claimed that that AT&T made four payments to Mr. Cohen’s firm totaling $200,000 from October 2017 to January 2018. A source tells the Wall Street Journal that AT&T’s monthly payments started earlier. “Right around [when the] inauguration is happening, we need somebody who knows the administration,” a person identified as a “person familiar with the matter,” told the Wall Street Journal. “How does he think? What are their priorities?”

Whatever advice Cohen provided to AT&T does not appear to have helped the company overcome Trump’s opposition to the merger with Time Warner. The president was critical of the deal on the campaign trail and has remained a critic in the White House. As well, it did not assist AT&T in persuading the Justice Department that its merger would not be anticompetitive.

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http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/...p-lawyer-cohen/




This is what happens when you assume that the new administration will be a corrput as ones over the prior 8 years, actually prior decades.