Michael Cohen caught up in another ugly bribe scandal
The Special Counsel, Robert Mueller, has been focused primarily on potential Russian interference in our last election for president, with Donald J. Trump winning the electoral college and the presidency. In recent months, we have learned that various other foreign nationals, from the United Arab Emirates to Saudi Arabia, to Qatar, have all used various channels to gain better treatment from the current administration. We now learn that Ukraine paid to have access to President Trump.
Reports on Wednesday are that Michael Cohen (whose “taxi king” business partner, Gene Freidman, has entered a plea agreement), personal lawyer to Donald Trump, was paid $400,000 by intermediaries for Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko. Cohen, who is not registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, was approached, according to reports, because the Washington, D.C. lobbyists for Poroshenko and the Ukraine were successful only in getting Poroshenko a photo opportunity.
To date, there has been no evidence that Trump knew of the payment. However, after Cohen received the payment (some accounts claim it was $600,000), a meeting was arranged. Listed as only Trump dropping into meetings on the official White House schedule, the BBC reports the reason for the meeting and the length of the meeting: “Mr. Cohen’s fee was for getting Mr. Poroshenko more than just an embarrassingly brief few minutes of small talk and a handshake, the senior official said. But negotiations continued until the early hours of the day of the visit.”
After the meeting and after the United States agreed to give the Ukraine weapons to fight Russia, Ukraine discontinued its cooperation with the Mueller investigation. It is not clear whether the payment to Cohen and the meeting that happened are connected at all to the decision of Ukraine to stop cooperating with respect to various Paul Manafort issues. But it adds yet another questionable timeline of events with a foreign national that involved the Trump administration and Trump’s “Mr. Fixit,” Michael Cohen.
Daniel is a lawyer writing and teaching about SCOTUS, and is the author of the book “The Chief Justices” about the SCOTUS as seen through the center seat.