Pay for Play in the Trump Era, To the Soundtrack to Goodfellas - By Josh Marshall

[DonViejo]

By Josh Marshall | May 9, 2018 4:29 pm

In some ways the more fascinating aspect of the fallout from yesterday’s Michael Cohen revelations is seeing Fortune 500 companies struggle to explain how and why they found themselves connected, albeit simply through a shell company, with the President’s payoffs to Stormy Daniels and his fixer’s pay-offs from a Russian oligarch. I think the evolving Novartis story is going to be a good example of the difference between the press release business press and the national political press in full scandal mode. Novartis’s explanation simply makes zero sense – it’s telling that they thought it would survive first contact with any scrutiny. I suspect we’ll find out that that’s the case because it’s a hastily contrived cover story. Even now, the story seems to be evolving toward a more plausible and problematic destination.

Here’s Novartis’s official explanation.

In February 2017, shortly after the election of President Trump, Novartis entered into a one year agreement with Essential Consultants. With the recent change in administration, Novartis believed that Michael Cohen could advise the company as to how the Trump administration might approach certain US healthcare policy matters, including the Affordable Care Act. The agreement was for a term of one year, and paid Essential Consultants 100,000 USD per month. In March 2017, Novartis had its first meeting with Michael Cohen under this agreement. Following this initial meeting, Novartis determined that Michael Cohen and Essential Consultants would be unable to provide the services that Novartis had anticipated related to US healthcare policy matters and the decision was taken not to engage further. As the contract unfortunately could only be terminated for cause, payments continued to be made until the contract expired by its own terms in February 2018.

The engagement of Essential Consultants predated Vas Narasimhan becoming Novartis CEO and he was in no way involved with this agreement. Contrary to recent media reports, this agreement was also in no way related to the group dinner Dr. Narasimhan had at the World Economic Forum in Davos with President Trump and 15 Europe based industry leaders. Suggestions to the contrary clearly misrepresent the facts and can only be intended to further personal or political agendas as to which Novartis should not be a part.

In terms of the Special Counsel’s office, Novartis was contacted in November 2017 regarding the company’s agreement with Essential Consultants. Novartis cooperated fully with the Special Counsel’s office and provided all the information requested. Novartis considers this matter closed as to itself and is not aware of any outstanding questions regarding the agreement.

The first thing to note is that whereas last night we thought Novartis had paid Cohen slightly less than $400,000 it turns out they paid him $1.2 million. So there’s $800,000 that went through a channel other than what we heard about last night.

But let’s consider this explanation.

They signed Cohen up because they thought he could advise them on US health care policy. Obviously, Cohen doesn’t know the first thing about healthcare policy. He’s just someone who’s close to Trump. What is important to keep in mind here is that when Trump came into office the pharmaceutical companies were terrified and flying blind as to what would happen under President Trump. There was actually an out of the blue statement Trump made in the second week of January 2017 about cracking down on the Big Phrma that had the big companies terrified. He told a press conference on January 11th that the pharmaceutical companies were “getting away with murder.” He had repeatedly talked about reining in drug prices on the campaign trail. But in January he seemed to be upping the ante dramatically. It even crosses my mind, in retrospect, whether this comment wasn’t intended to scare companies into Cohen’s arms.

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https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/pay-for-play-in-the-trump-era-to-the-soundtrack-to-goodfellas

[BigmanPigman]

1. This is making me angrier by the second!

If every single person who is involved in the bribes, corruption, etc were to get on a boat they would fill the Titanic. And it will continue unchecked and unpunished.

[Cognitive_Resonance]

2. Cohen was to provide KAI "legal consulting concerning accounting standards on production costs"

which is absurd on its face. KAI needs to hire some of those AT&T folks who know how to disguise the verbiage. In any event, KAI is about to cash in big time on the jet trainer program. Worked for them apparently.