Attorney Michael Avenatti’s out-of-the-blue announcement that a Russian oligarch’s company had funneled money to presidential fixer Michael Cohen in the months following the 2016 election was the kind of bombshell story that makes the most even-keeled observers spit out their soup. On its face, the charge seemed to indicate the closest thing we’ve seen yet to a secret arrangement between the Trump campaign and meddlesome Russians. Perhaps more remarkable was the fact that Avenatti, the celebrity lawyer representing adult film star Stormy Daniels in her legal/public relations battle against the president, had somehow acquired information crucial to Trump’s other scandal, the question of Russian collusion. What was this, a crossover episode?
Within hours, reporters had verified portions of Avenatti’s claim—although as with many of the theatrical lawyer’s pronouncements, the full story was a little less sexy and a little more opaque. This much is settled: In the months following President Trump’s wild presidential victory, his personal lawyer Michael Cohen began to peddle himself to companies as a “consultant.” They would fork over ludicrous amounts of money through a shell company, Essential Consultants LLC, and he would advise them on how to do business with the new commander-in-chief. (That’s the most charitable explanation of the payments: the other possibility is that he was selling bald influence.) These companies included big names such as Novartis and AT&T. Also included was an investment firm called Columbus Nova, which is chaired by the cousin of Russian oligarch Viktor Veskelberg, who is also the company’s biggest client.
It’s Columbus Nova that supplies the supposed Russia connection, which the company insists is ridiculous: “Columbus Nova is an investment management company solely owned and controlled by Americans,” a company lawyer said in a statement Wednesday. “The claim that Viktor Vekselberg was involved in or provided any funding for Columbus Nova’s engagement of Michael Cohen is patently untrue.” It’s entirely possible that Columbus Nova’s protests are sincere, and this new supposed smoking gun of collusion is simply the latest example of overexcited media types playing “Seven Degrees of Separation” with Trump and a Russian businessman.
In fact, although the question of collusion is obviously important, it’s almost beside the point here. The more significant condemnation of Trump and his associates is the more prosaic offense: the casual pay-to-play scheme which allowed a morally vacuous lawyer to use his personal relationship with the president to enrich himself. If Trump was unaware of Cohen’s behavior then, or if he is disgusted by the swampiness of it now, he has not said so. At the White House Wednesday, press secretary Sarah Sanders declined to address the subject. Asked whether the drain-the-swamp president felt it was appropriate for Cohen to be selling access to him, Sanders replied that “That’s a determination that individual companies have to make.”
Ironically, it’s this sort of casual contempt for transparency and ethical norms—the unwillingness to play by the rules that help shield a president from all-too-human conflicts of interest—that presents a more persistent threat to our democracy. Is funneling money to the president’s lawyer only a horror if it’s Russians doing the funneling? Isn’t the idea that any American with the scratch can buy the ear of our mercurial president pretty bad too?
