Jailed former longtime Donald Trump lawyer Michael Cohen had more than 1,000 communications with the head of a Russia linked firm after Election Day 2016 – and banked more than $400,000 in just five months from the company, unsealed warrants revealed Wednesday.
The information about Cohen was contained in five warrants that prosecutors obtained at the start of the Russia probe.
President Donald Trump on Wednesday delivered yet another of his blistering critiques on the probe, which he termed a 'hoax' that was run by 18 'angry' Democrats.
The warrants tell an alternate story, with numerous suspicious transactions running through an LLC, Essential Consultants, that Cohen initially set up to process payments to porn star Storm Daniels, who claims she had an affair with Trump.
However it bank and wire transfers also captured the attention of investigators.
One warrant application, dated July 2017, cites repeated deposits from 'foreign businesses' and a 'Russian nexus.'
The five deposits, in $83,333, were from Columbus Nova, a U.S. company that prosecutors noted was linked to Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg.
Vekselberg, the warrant application points out, met with Russian President Vladimir Putin months earlier, helped restore Faberge eggs as a point of national pride, and helped build an airport in connection to the 2018 FIFA World Cup.
'The United States continues to investigate if any of the payments or financial relationships described above, or other relationships described further below, were connected to Cohen's involvement in the distribution of a plan to lift Russian sanctions,' according to a warrant application flagged by CNN.
'Telephone records show no such text messages or telephone calls between COHEN's cellular telephone and the CEO of Columbus Nova prior to November 8, 2016.'
The warrant also noted a New York Times report of Cohen's involvement of a purported Ukraine peace plan that would have resulted in the lifting of sanctions on Russia.
Other deposits were from a Korean aerospace firm and a Kazakh bank.
Cohen is now serving a three-year prison sentence for tax evasion, lying to Congress about a Trump real estate project in Moscow, and campaign finance violations related to hush-money payments he orchestrated to two
