On January 9th, 2017, Michael Cohen sanctioned and met with Viktor Vekselberg at Trump Tower, according to CNN.
Nowadays Cohen is already dealing with many issues. Meanwhile Vekselberg is a Russian oligarch, a term used to describe a business leader with political influence. He is the chairman of Renova Group, a Russian asset manager. Vekselberg was questioned by Robert Mueller’s investigative team after the FBI stopped his private jet from leaving New York earlier in 2018.
Someone else who was a part of the January 9th Trump Tower meeting is Andrew Intrater, Vekselberg’s cousin and head of Columbus Nova, a management company whose biggest client is also Vekselberg. Family ties hold strong.
The trio supposedly met to discuss US-Russia relations and the meeting lasted about thirty minutes according to a CNN source.
Public payments show that Columbus Nova paid Cohen $580,000 for a consulting contract that began in January 2017. The contract was supposed to last a year but ended in six months after Cohen failed to meet the deal’s requirements.
Also, since the payments were made public, Columbus Nava has tried to separate itself Vekselberg, claiming that the oligarch did not use the company as a link to pay Cohen.
Intrater also paid over $300,000 in donations to the 2017 inauguration and the Republican National Committee. Richard Owens, Intrater’s attorney said that Columbus Nova has been cooperative with federal investigators.
There has been much investigation into this because it is possible that this meeting may be linked to the possible Russian involvement in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
This is another Trump Tower meeting with Russians that may be connected to the June 2016 gathering between Donald Trump Jr, Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushmer and Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian lawyer.
Only time will tell if there’s more to this story.
