joining our discussion now is democratic congressman jim himes from connecticut. he is the member of the house intelligence committee. and congressman himes, i want to get your reaction to what michael avenatti has revealed today and what he calls an executive summary of the funds going in to the llc that was created by michael cohen we thought initial i will only to pay the $130,000 settlement to stormy daniels. we now discover through michael avenatti that $4.5 million has moved through that llc. yeah, well, i mean a couple of observations. number one, it s hard to imagine how you could push the rejection of the iran deal off the front page with something like this, but that has here is something that makes us closer to war in the middle east. we could six months from now watch iranian centrifuges
president and for michael cohen. and it doesn t matter how many times they send out rudy giuliani to call us names and call me an ambulance chaser and do everything in his power to distract away from the facts. the facts are ugly. these are facts. in your executive summary, as you call it, of all of this money going in and out of the llc, you identify viktor vekselberg as a big flow of money into the llc. describe that point. between january of 2017 and approximately august of 2017, this russian oligarch with significant ties to vladimir putin utilized an entity that he has control over, a u.s.-based entity that is wholly owned by a russian parent company to funnel approximately a half million to michael cohen, the personal attorney at the right hand of the president of the united
funneling money possibly from the russian oligarch disputes what you ve said. and i m going to come to that in a moment. but i want to go back over something you just said, because i haven t heard anything about this before from you, and it was not in your executive summary you. talked about the possibility where that $500,000 went. you re now talking about where the money that came in to the llc went. and you re indicating that you have reason to believe it was distributed beyond just michael cohen. does the llc have any employees? other than michael cohen who i don t think technically is an employee, we re not aware of any employees at the llc. and that s typical of llcs. it s very common that they don t have any employees, especially when they re shell likes this for moving money. correct. but michael cohen is only the person we know with a formal association with that llc, isn t he? that s true. so when you say you have reason to believe that the money that went into
distract away from the facts. the facts are ugly. these are facts. in your executive summary, as you call it, of all of this money going in and out of the llc, you identify viktor vekselberg as a big flow of money into the llc. describe that point. between january of 2017 and approximately august of 2017, this russian oligarch with significant ties to vladimir putin utilized an entity that he has control over, a u.s.-based entity that is wholly owned by a russian parent company to funnel approximately a half million to michael cohen, the personal attorney at the right hand of the president of the united states who at the time at least during a significant period of that time not only held himself out as the personal attorney to the president but also was employed by the trump organization.
association with that llc, isn t he? that s true. so when you say you have reason to believe that the money that went into this llc went to people or a person other than michael cohen, and you made a reference to it possibly being the president of the united states, are you suggesting that you have information, that the money that went into that llc found its way to donald trump? no. but we don t know one way or the other. here is what i believe. a significant sum of money came in to the llc during the time period of october 2016 until january at many minimum of this year. okay? a lot of money came into the llc. far beyond the $500,000. far beyond the money that novartis paid. far beyond the money that at&t paid. we do not believe that all of the expenditures, subsequent expenditures by the llc or outflows of the money, we do not believe all of that went to