their money. one un-named employee said, quote, they decided not to really engage cohen for any activities after that. the employee continued. rather than attempt to cancel the contract, the company allowed it to lapse early in 2018 and not run the risk of ticking off the president. it might have caused anger, this person said. if they cancelled that contract when they discovered that president trump s friend, michael cohen, was absolutely useless to them. new reporting in the washington post tonight quotes michael cohen as saying, i m crushing it when all the money was pouring in. and now it is apparently crushing him. the washington post reports as he s facing mounting legal bills michael cohen refinanced his park avenue condominium in recent days. everyone tried to get the answer to my first question to michael avenatti last night which is how did he get this information
reason for paying michael cohen, the winner of that goes to at&t, and part of the reason they released publically was, it was to pay for an understanding of the inner workings of trump, his thought process, how he likes to operate, how he likes to make decisions, how he process information. ron klain, i guess they never watched the apprentice and read a world available in the press about donald trump. they were paying michael cohen $50,000 a month for a look inside the mind of donald trump. and six months into paying that, this book came out, from michael wolff, 30 bucks could have saved that half, at least, of the $600,000, they pay to michael cohen. as the old joke goes the inner workings of the mind of donald trump would be the shortest book ever written. i don t think they needed to pay $50,000 a month for that.
barbara mcquade, former federal prosecutor, and deanna fill la pain co, a form investigator. ron klain, the speculation continues of where michael avenatti got this information. there s one expert quoted in one report saying that this is the kind of information that could be obtained from one of those suspicious activity reports or from a series of suspicious activity reports about bank transactions but so far it s michael avenatti leading the way on this. it is. and, you know, he will, i imagine that judge wood will order him to disclose the source of this information and he ll have to do so. if indeed it did come from an illegally disclosed sar, the person who disclosed it will be in trouble. as you said earlier the fundamental point from the
the company put out a statement it s owned by americans, it s an american based company. we have to ask who s exerting the ultimate control over the company and directing the actions being made. we have information that they ve been very influential in the actions of columbus nova. so the pattern of seeing the vekselberg entity made to trump before, it raises questions what they intend for this particular payment was. barbara mcquade, michael avenatti keeps saying the recurring chorus from him is he wants the suspicious activity reports on michael cohen released, he believes they should be made public now. can they be made public now is one question, but the other part is, what is it that michael avenatti believes?
we re seeing michael avenatti unearth every other week it seems there s something kind of extraordinary coming from him, who s feeding off who here? is avenatti working off of what appear to be fruits of federal investigations or is he feeding the federal investigations? i think it s probably a little bit of both. we know he s been cooperating with the investigation in the southern district of new york looking into potential company finance violations, he said that publically. but it does appear the release he made yesterday was probably the result of an internal federal investigation i would suspect from the treasury department, possibly leaked from the justice department but most likely leaked from the treasury department. it does lead you to ask the question, are other people coming forward? there are whistle blowers in the private or public sector who might look at michael cohen now as someone out taking on the president and saying this is someone i can bring information to, he l