https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/tonights-staggering-revelations
In other words, just through this single shell company Cohen was receiving major payments from a Russian oligarch and additional moneys from various Fortune 500 companies looking for access to President Trump. On the US corporate side these are classic off-the-books pay-for-play payments to what appears to have been a slush fund. If you’ve spent any time covering political scandals you can’t look even at these initial details and not think this is the kind of story that sends a bunch of people to prison.
I said above that we didn’t have confirmation of the claims in Avenatti’s document. But over the last three or four hours Columbus Nova (the Vekselberg company), AT&T and Novartis have each confirmed the payments as described. So there’s no question that they happened. And these are only some of the pay-offs. They’ve also confirmed the dollar amounts. So while we still don’t know where or how Avenatti got this information he must have had access to one of Cohen’s ledgers, a bank statement or perhaps an investigative document. The details are simply too specific.
The US corporate payments appear to be just garden variety corruption. In theory, maybe Cohen had an actual consulting firm filing all the requisite forms to do above board lobbying and we didn’t know about it. But I really, really doubt that. These payoffs won’t stand legal scrutiny. But the big revelation is Vekselberg’s money. Remember, we heard recently that he was the one who Mueller’s investigators stopped and questioned when he transited through a US airport. This is money, more or less directly from a top Russian oligarch with close ties to Vladimir Putin, putting money directly into a shell company controlled by Donald Trump’s bag man and fixer. The collusion is real and high level. We’re finding the money trail.
I know they won't hear about this on Fox News and Breitbart and Rush, but if Trump supporters did somehow happen to catch wind of this would it change their opinion of the president? Or would they write it off as fake news?