The Swiss pharmaceutical company that paid President Trump’s personal lawyer $1.2 million in 2017 for access to the President, paid Michael Cohen nearly four times more than any of the actual lobbyists it employs to garner influence in Washington.
According to a Stat News review of Novartis’ 2017 and 2018 filing the Swiss drug company has spent $11.92 million on formal federal lobbying since Trump came into office, but none of the contracts with nearly four dozen lobbying firms were as expensive as the one it brokered with Cohen’s shell company Essential Consultants LLC.
Novartis did pay one single firm $80,000 in one quarter since Trump’s inauguration, a payment that doesn’t hold a candle to the $100,000 a month Cohen required. The contract in closest competition with the Cohen deal was with PricewaterhouseCoopers, which Novartis paid $950,000 in 2017, according to Stat News.
Stat News noted Novartis does not have to disclose how much it pays its eight in-house lobbyists.
Read the full report here.
