Novartis says it paid Trump attorney Michael Cohen more than $1 million for nothing

John Fritze | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Daniels' lawyer: Russian money tied to Trump Stormy Daniels' lawyer says hundreds of thousands of dollars streamed into an account for President Donald Trump's personal attorney Michael Cohen from companies with business interests with the U.S. government. (May 9)

WASHINGTON — A Swiss pharmaceutical giant paid President Trump's personal attorney more than a million dollars for work it quickly discovered he was unable to execute, an arrangement that drew attention from special counsel Robert Mueller.

A subsidiary of Novartis — the global drug maker behind Ritalin, Lamisil and other household name medicines — paid former Trump attorney Michael Cohen $100,000 a month for a year beginning after Trump's inauguration. Company officials said they learned after their first meeting with Cohen that he wouldn't be able to help them.

But the company continued to pay him until February of this year, citing a contract it had already signed.

"Novartis believed that Michael Cohen could advise the company as to how the Trump administration might approach certain U.S. healthcare policy matters, including the Affordable Care Act," Novartis spokeswoman Sofina Mirza-Reid said in a statement.

The revelation of payments to Cohen by several companies, including AT&T and a firm called Columbus Nova that is associated with the Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg, comes as the former Trump attorney is under investigation by federal prosecutors in New York. Cohen is best known as the lawyer who paid $130,000 to adult film actress Stormy Daniels, the woman who claims she had a sexual encounter with Trump.

Novartis declined Wednesday to answer questions about what work, specifically, it hoped Cohen would perform and whether Cohen approached Novartis or vise versa. The company said in one of several statements about the matter that it was contacted last year by attorneys in Mueller's office regarding its arrangement with Cohen.

Citing an unnamed employee at Novartis, the medical news website STAT reported that Cohen reached out to the company.

Lobbying and financial reports filed by Novartis show that, like other drug companies, it had significant business before the government. Novartis' contract with Cohen came at a time when Trump appeared open to allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices. That idea was strongly opposed by drug firms, and Trump ultimately abandoned it.

$9 million on lobbying

Novartis, which spent nearly $9 million lobbying Congress and the White House last year, is also under pressure from prosecutors in New York. In a longstanding court case, those prosecutors have said Novartis paid for expensive meals and alcohol for doctors with the expectation that they would write prescriptions for Novartis-made drugs.

There is no evidence Cohen intervened on behalf of Novartis in any of those issues, but the company did have a seat at the table with the president on at least two occasions. Former Novartis CEO Joseph Jimenez met with Trump and other drug makers at the White House days after Trump's inauguration in early 2017. At the time, Jimenez said he wanted to discuss pricing models with Trump, as well as the rollback of Obamacare.

The company's new CEO, Vasant Narasimhan, was among several European business leaders who attended a dinner with Trump in Switzerland earlier this year. The meeting, which took place at the World Economic Forum in Davos, was billed as an opportunity for the president to pitch overseas firms on investing in the United States.

The dinner also included Werner Baumann, CEO of Bayer, which is based in Germany, and Mark Schneider, the CEO of Switzerland-based Nestle.

“We’re really pleased with the tax reform, but also very pleased with the great progress being made at FDA,” Narasimhan told Trump , according to a transcript. “We believe you have a great leadership team there and they’re doing all the right things to accelerate innovation.”

Novartis said in a statement that Narasimhan was "in no way involved with this agreement" and said he arrangement with Cohen was unrelated to the Davos dinner.

Jimenez, the previous CEO, could not be reached for comment.

Cohen didn't deliver

Novartis officials said they met with Cohen shortly after they signed a contract to pay a company he had created called Essential Consultants. During that meeting, Novartis said, the company determined that "Michael Cohen and Essential Consultants would be unable to provide the services that Novartis had anticipated related to US healthcare policy matters and the decision was taken not to engage further."

But the company continued to pay Cohen for the better part of a year because, it said, it could not terminate its contract without cause.

Watchdog groups questioned the arrangement, noting that Cohen had not previously lobbied on behalf of the health care industry.

"All he is is a guy who's close to Trump," said Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen. "Nothing about it makes any sense at all."