We’ve been telling you for years that Michael Cohen’s business history couldn’t survive first contact with serious investigative scrutiny. He’s been tied his entire life to emigres from Russia and Ukraine; he’s been their business partners, and they’ve been the source of rivers of money from that part of the world which Cohen has used to make himself a very wealthy man. A number of them have reputed ties to organized crime. Taxis, real estate, casino cruise boats. These are all businesses that require large amounts of cash to operate. They’re all good ways to channel cash into the United States. With Cohen taxis have always been the biggest red flag in our reporting. Read More

Yesterday a reader asked me if we had a list of our key Michael Cohen articles and, if we didn’t, could I recommend a few key ones. First, I think this piece from 13 months ago remains the best look at Cohen’s backstory. To go deeper you can read this piece on Cohen, Sater and the Trump-Russia money channel, this piece on what the CIA and FBI knew about it before 2016, and the eye-popping details about Cohen’s childhood friend and later fellow Trump associate Felix Sater. If you missed it, I explained last night to subscribers why I don’t buy that yesterday’s events were about the Stormy Daniels case. Read More