Not every company that self-described fixer Michael Cohen hit up for payola in exchange for purported access to President Trump was dumb enough to cough up cash, a new report said Monday.
While corporate bigs like AT&T, Novartis and Korea Aerospace Industries and wannabes like a New York company linked to a Kremlin-connected Russian oligarch came across, others like Ford and Uber laughingly told Cohen to take a hike, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Cohen, Trump’s personal lawyer and staunch loyalist, bragged to pals about building a huge law practice to cash in on his connections to the president.
He talked about approaching foreign governments and companies, and also scored a relationship with the prestigious lobbying and law firm Squire Patton Boggs — though he whined that they weren’t paying him enough.
And while he did make a lot of money — at least $2 million, according to published reports — he didn’t deliver much except causing his clients to be caught up in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation and Manhattan federal prosecutors’ probe into Cohen himself.
Cohen’s pitch was blunt, the paper reported, telling prospective clients that they “should fire them all,” referring to their existing advisers, and hire him instead because because of his supposed insight into the world of all things Trump
“I have the best relationship with the president on the outside, and you need to hire me,” Cohen told them, a source told the WSJ.
Cohen nagged Uber, which told him no, citing his ownership of New York City taxi medallions as a conflict of interest with the ride-hailing firm, a sources said.
He changed his story in response to the objections, reminding the company he was “the president’s lawyer,” the source said, an episode that left company officials “bemused.”
“I want you to know I’m looking out for deals,” Cohen told his billionaire buddy Mark Cuban in April 2017 as he wooed the Dallas Mavericks’ owner on hiring a health industry firm Cohen took on as a client, according to Cuban.
“Michael is a hustler,” Cuban said. “That’s who he is, that’s what he does.”
The deals Cohen was able to get were made through Essential Consultants, the same company he had created months earlier to make a $130,000 hush money payment to porn actress Stormy Daniels to clam up about a one-night stand she said she had with Trump in 2006, a fling the president denies.
Cohen in effect called the paper’s report fake news.
“These falsehoods and gross inaccuracies are only being written in the hopes of maligning me for sensationalistic purposes. The truth will prevail and will ultimately be proven in court and not by pundits,” he said in a statement that did not specify any inaccuracies in the report.
Last month, the feds raided Cohen’s home, hotel room and office as part of an investigation into possible bank fraud and campaign finance violations in his efforts to raise cash and cover up negative information about Trump during the 2016 campaign. Cohen has denied wrongdoing.
AT&T paid Cohen $1.2 million from February 2017 until the same month this year — even though company brass realized he had nothing of value to offer them after a single sit-down.
The company last week acknowledged that it was a mistake to hire him, and also that it had cooperated in Mueller’s probe late last year.
Novartis, the giant Swiss-based drug manufacturer, also said it regretted hiring Cohen and that it had also cooperated with Mueller.
A third company, Columbus Nova, connected to Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg, a pal of President Vladimir Putin, also hired Cohen.
Columbus Nova CEO Andrew Intrater had donated $250,000 to the Trump inaugural committee, and he and Vekselberg attended the president’s inaugural festivities.
Squire Patton Boggs gave Cohen office space at their New York headquarters in Rockefeller Center — but Cohen was bitter about the arrangement.
“Every one of these motherf–kers is going around the world and using my relationship in order to acquire clients, but I’m not being fairly compensated,” a source recalled Cohen saying.
Cohen also pitched Ford, which also wound up under Mueller’s microscope.
Ziad Ojakli, Ford’s head of government affairs, was interviewed by Mueller’s team about their exchanges.



