Heres how it came to be. In may of this year, may 22nd, the New York Times had a scoop that they probably only got because they are specifically the New York Times. They sent crack reporters to an otherwise sleepy courthouse in albany, new york, not a Federal Courthouse, a state court, because that day in that state court in new york, a longtime Business Partner of Michael Cohens, A Taxicab Mogul Named Gene Friedman Who everybody called the taxi king, he was in court. He had been facing really serious charges in new york, Tax Evasion Charges in new york more than 5 million and four criminal counts of tax fraud and facing a charge of grand larceny. A big stack of charges involving a large amount of money and potentially a large amount of jail time. The story they uncovered at the courthouse that day, for some reason, friedman had gotten this huge Criminal Liability he was facing winnowed down to almost
nothing. He was able to work out some sort of deal where all of that prison time and
in into pin michael cohen. as part of that investigation, they were able to speak with him and presumably get information from him and offer him obviously if he had some sort of legal concerns of his own, they were going to say you know what, you don t need to have those concerns because obviously we ll offer you you some so we don t know that any legal concerns he had had to do specifically with donald trump or whatever the case is, but prosecutors said i m so glad that you said that. because what his legal concerns could be his own legal concerns. and i ll highlight that. paragraph 38 r, page 17, it say an executive of the company, executive one who is allen weisselberg, first of his monthly invoices requesting purchase support to this retainer agreement payment for services rendered for the month of january and february. except to those services were not legal services, this was all part of a plan to pay back michael cohen for his payment to
michael cohen made what is described as an illegal payoff to stormy daniels to keep from telling about an alleged affair with donald trump. prosecutors allege they filed around this plea donald trump directed him to do that, but then also michael cohen there after, got paid back for having put out that money in that illegal payoff. as prosecutors tell the story, it was the trump organization used as the entity to pay cohen back. on or about february 14, 2017, the day after mike flynn was fired just in case you re counting, on or about february 14, 2017, michael cohen, the defendant sent an executive of the company, executivetive, the first of his monthly invoices requesting pursuant to a retainer agreement payment for services rendered for the months of january and february 2017. it listed $35,000 for each of