In the immortal words of Deep Throat: "Follow the money!"
Staggering Revelations
Tonight we have what I'd say may be the most staggering revelations since the tangle of "Trump/Russia" investigations began almost two years ago. This is not hyperbole.
The most important ones are that a Russian oligarch paid more than $500,000 into the shell company that Cohen earlier used to make his payment to Stormy Daniels. The money is nominally from the US affiliate of Viktor Vekselberg's holding company. But this is a direct connection. AT&T made payments totaling $200,000. Novartis, the drug manufacturer, chipped in almost $400,000. In what still must be considered preliminary reporting, The New York Times now says that transactions totaling at least $4.4 million flowed into "Essential Consultants LLC", the shell company Cohen used as the vehicle to pay Stormy Daniels and then later used to arrange another hush agreement at least nominally for billionaire Elliott Broidy, a then-RNC deputy finance chair who is tied up in the Trump/Russia probe through fixer George Nader. The payments all end in January 2018. That's when the name "Essential Consultants LLC" was first published by The Wall Street Journal as part of the Stormy Daniels story.
Click here to read the whole thing.
And by the way, I don't think the real "Deep Throat" (Mark Felt) actually said "Follow the money." At least, no one ever said in public that was a direct quote from him so it may have been invented by William Goldman for the movie, All the President's Men. But someone said it.