Special counsel Robert Mueller found evidence that Michael Cohen violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act, but ultimately decided against pursuing charges against Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer, according to newly released court documents.
Mueller did charge former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and his associates Rick Gates and Sam Patten for failing to register as a representative of a foreign government. But documents released Tuesday by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York show Mueller had evidence.
“The affidavits in support of the SCO [Special Counsel’s Office] Warrants describe evidence of several different courses of conduct by Cohen, including, among other things, false statements to financial institutions relating to the purpose of an account he opened in the name of Essential Consultants LLC and the nature of the funds flowing into that account, and activities undertaken by Cohen on behalf of certain foreign persons or foreign entities without having registered as a foreign agent,” one of the special agents with the U.S. Attorneys Office for the Southern District of New York wrote in documents released today.
The documents don’t say how Cohen escaped being charged under FARA.
According to the Justice Department, the law “requires persons acting as agents of foreign principals in a political or quasi-political capacity to make periodic public disclosure of their relationship with the foreign principal, as well as activities, receipts, and disbursements in support of those activities.”
The special agent provided a list of exhibits that noted evidence of FARA violations:
The documents revealed that between January 2017 and August 2017, Essential Consultants received $583,332.98 from Columbus Nova LLC — an international investment firm connected to Renova Group, which was controlled by a Russian national named Viktor Vekselberg. In March 2018, Mueller’s investigators reportedly questioned Vekselberg in a New York airport.
Vekselberg was also one of a couple dozen people tied to the Russian government who was sanctioned by the U.S. in 2018 in response to what the U.S. called Russia’s “malign activity.”
Between April 2017 and February 2018, Essential Consultants received $1,099,780 in payments from Novartis Investments, a financial subsidiary of a Swiss pharmaceutical company. And between May and November 2017, Essential Consultants received $600,000 from Korea Aerospace Industries.
Cohen’s Essential Consultants also received a $150,000 payment from Kazkommertsbank, a bank in Kazakhstan.
Cohen would use Essential Consultants to make a $130,000 alleged “hush money” payment to Stormy Daniels in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election.
Controversy related to these foreign payments erupted during Cohen’s February 2019 testimony in front of the House Oversight Committee, when Republicans on the committee accused Cohen of trying to hide his foreign lobbying, and said he violated FARA and other disclosure laws.
When Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., pressed Cohen on all this foreign money during the hearing, Cohen said all of his foreign contracts contained the line: “I do not lobby and I do not do government relations work.”
In the middle of the hearing, Meadows tweeted that he “entered a referral for criminal investigation of Michael Cohen, who violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act by illegally lobbying on behalf of foreign entities without registering.” Meadows also referenced Cohen’s remarks about blind loyalty to President Trump, saying of Cohen: “His real blind loyalty? It’s to the almighty dollar.”
