By Evan Hurst as originally published over at Wonkette and reposted here with permission
OH SHIT! Michael Avenatti gonna have to appoint a special prosecutor to look into all the Russian conspiracy shit involving Michael Cohen, Donald Trump and Russia he just dropped on Twitter, and may we suggest Preet Bharara or Hillary Clinton, oh HAHAHAH just kidding they are attorney general of New York now, according to Twitter’s wet dreams.
The docs Avenatti dropped examine payments made/received/funneled/laundered through Essential Consultants LLC, the shell company Cohen set up and used to send porn hush money to porners from his very special boss MIST-URR TWUMP. We don’t know how Avenatti got this information, so we’ll just assume for now he winked at the bank that holds the account in a very suggestive way and showed ’em a little nip, and the bank was like “Is this a stick-up! Oh we hope this is a stick-up!” and just started throwing documents at his head.
The first major allegation in the documents is that Cohen lied to the bank when setting up the account about what his “company” was and why he needed the account. Bank fraud? Maybe! Cohen is reportedly being investigated for that!
The next allegation is where it gets good. We’ll let Avenatti explain:
After significant investigation, we have discovered that Mr. Trump’s atty Mr. Cohen received approximately $500,000 in the mos. after the election from a company controlled by a Russian Oligarc with close ties to Mr. Putin. These monies may have reimbursed the $130k payment.
— Michael Avenatti (@MichaelAvenatti) May 8, 2018
Indeed it says that “within approximately 75 days of the payment to Ms. Clifford, Mr. Viktor Vekselberg, a Russian Oligarch with close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, caused substantial funds to be deposited into the bank account from which Mr. Cohen made the payment. It appears that these funds may have replenished the account following the payment to Ms. Clifford.”
HUH WEIRD, RIGHT? Did you think the Southern District of New York was REALLY just investigating Cohen for stuff completely separate from the Robert Mueller investigation? SILLY YOU! How many moneys did Vekselberg send Cohen through his American cousin’s company? Oh, just a cool half million. Definitely enough to cover the Stormy reimbursement, or enough for other stuff also too if Avenatti is just saying naughty accusations up in that tweet.
And who is this Viktor Vekselberg chap? He is just this guy special counsel Robert Mueller pulled off a plane in New York City recently, in order to ask him specifically about payments like this, according to new reporting from CNN. Not long after that, the US Treasury Department stuck Vekselberg on the sanctions list, in retaliation for Russian election meddling, which conveniently means he’s no longer allowed to travel to the US to answer any of Mueller’s follow-up questions.
But Vekselberg is so much more than that! He’s a member of Putin’s inner circle, and as journalist Wendy Siegelman lays out in a very long Twitter thread, he’s LITERALLY EVERYWHERE in the Trump-Russia story. He attended Trump’s inauguration, he was at that 2015 Moscow RT dinner where Michael Flynn and Jill Stein ate dinner with Putin for “reasons,” by which they mean NO REASON AT ALL.
He partied with Ivanka and then-alleged-Putin girlfriend Wendi Deng (who may or may not be Ivanka’s Chinese intelligence handler, ALLEGEDLY) in Moscow just a few months after Moscow Miss Universe 2013, the one where Trump may or may not have ordered some Russian pee hookers on Uber Eats. (We are joking! Uber Eats does not deliver Russian hookers! YET.)
He co-owns a Russian aluminum company (also sanctioned!) that’s majority owned by Oleg Deripaska AKA “Putin’s favorite oligarch” AKA Daily Caller blogger (???) AKA Paul Manafort’s old business partner, to whom Manafort offered special secret briefings on the Trump campaign, perhaps as a way to pay back money he may have stolen or laundered from Deripaska.
AND he’s connected to those fuckers from Alfa Bank, the ones with the weird server that only communicated with that weird Trump Organization server. (Remember, Alex van der Zwaan, who actually reported to jail TODAY after lying to the FBI about his work for Manafort and the pro-Russia Ukrainian Party Of Regions, is the son-in-law of Alfa Bank bigwig German Khan.)
AND he and his American cousin Andrew Intrater made shitloads of donations to Trump’s campaign and his inauguration, through Vekselberg’s (Russian) Renova Group and Intrater’s (American) Columbus Nova, which should really be read as the same thing. Indeed, Avenatti describes Columbus Nova as the “US investment vehicle for Renova Group.”
AND also too this:
Vekselberg was largest shareholder in Bank of Cyprus when Wilbur Ross was Vice Chairmanhttps://t.co/99iItiLUzH
— Wendy Siegelman (@WendySiegelman) May 8, 2018
And so much more!
So what the fuck were those payments for? Any NO COLLUSION, NO COLLUSION, YOU ARE THE COLLUSION?
Michael Cohen’s attorney, Steve Ryan, won’t discuss the $500,000 Michael Avenatti says Cohen received from Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg in 2017. “I understand the shorthand you’re using, but it wasn’t a payment,” Ryan says before hanging up.
— Natasha Bertrand (@NatashaBertrand) May 8, 2018
Oh, it wasn’t a payment. Well, that clears that up!
Now, what’s funny about the records Avenatti dropped on us is that they show that Cohen used this account for SO MUCH SHIT. It’s not all porn star payoffs and treason, oh my lord!
There are four payments totaling almost $400K from pharmaceutical conglomerate Novartis (after which Trump met with the CEO of Novartis at Davos, HUH!), a payment from Korean Aerospace Industries LTD, and four payments from AT&T, totaling 200K. Unless Stormy Daniels said AT&T really fucked her and Michael Cohen took it LI’L BIT TOO LITERALLY, all this looks like BRIBES. Are they bribes? Hey, Michael Cohen, are these BRIBES? Because there’s definitely an AT&T/Time Warner merger being considered by the Justice Department right now, so INQUIRING MINDS, ETC.
(For the record, AT&T has released a statement that it was just paying Michael Cohen for “insights into understanding the new administration,” which is the weirdest euphemism for sex we have ever heard.)
This is of course on top of all the money that came from Vekselberg via Columbus Nova.
Avenatti also flags a bunch of weird in-and-out payments from Elliott Broidy, who may or may not be frontin’ about how all those payments were a cover-up for his own alleged affair with a Playboy model, when in reality he could be covering for Trump. POSSIBLY.
Oh, and here is a weird thing, about $10,980 in transfers to Cohen, at his Singapore bank account (because of course, why not) from a KOBE EVA KERESKEDELMI, which seems to be a wedding venue/provider in Budapest, referencing a “Ms. Nikolett Vadja.” Rachel Maddow’s people ran that through Google translate:
WHO THE FUCK IS NIKOLETT?
Yeah well, Rachel, two can play this “Google” game, and it took us about seven seconds to find Nikolett Barabas, a Hungarian supermodel who is DEFINITELY ABSOLUTELY Donald Trump’s type, and who used to date Russell Brand. Did Trump do something gross to her, or did he do a gross thing to a different Hungarian lady named Nikolett? We are just askin’ questions ‘n’ Googlin’!
Anyway, the point is we don’t know what the fuck all this means but we bet Robert Mueller does. Let’s see what smarty pantses on Twitter think:
Folks, I don’t think Michael Cohen is going to be able to wiggle out of this one.
— Bradley P. Moss (@BradMossEsq) May 8, 2018
The idea that Vekselberg was reimbursing the Stormy Daniels payments seems…far fetched. Not impossible, but…why? What seems much clearer is that Cohen set up a pay-for-play consulting vehicle that is not going to survive intense legal scrutiny.
— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) May 8, 2018
Wanna read the whole damn thing for yourself? Lucky for you!
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