If you've been watching the Michael Cohen hearing, you may have heard GOP's paragons of virtues attack Michael Cohen for some post-election consulting contracts -- selling his access, in other words. I remembered writing about it and oddly enough, no Republican outrage then!
Gee, Did Trump Take A Cut Of Michael Cohen's 'Consulting' Fees?
You'll notice what they didn't bring up during today's hearing? That Russian oligarchs were pouring a lot of cash into Cohen's shell company:
Avenatti Shows The Receipts: Michael Cohen's LLC Was Paid As 'Consultant'
May 8th, 2018, via Talking Points Memo:
The most important ones are that a Russian oligarch paid more than $500,000 into the shell company that Cohen earlier used to make his payment to Stormy Daniels. The money is nominally from the US affiliate of Viktor Vekselberg’s holding company. But this is a direct connection. AT&T made payments totaling $200,000. Novartis, the drug manufacturer, chipped in almost $400,000. In what still must be considered preliminary reporting, The New York Times now says that transactions totaling at least $4.4 million flowed into “Essential Consultants LLC”, the shell company Cohen used as the vehicle to pay Stormy Daniels and then later used to arrange another hush agreement at least nominally for billionaire Elliott Broidy, a then-RNC deputy finance chair who is tied up in the Trump/Russia probe through fixer George Nader. The payments all end in January 2018.* That’s when the name “Essential Consultants LLC” was first published by The Wall Street Journal as part of the Stormy Daniels’ story.
Do you remember any Republican investigations into this matter? Yeah, me neither.
