Though he reportedly made his millions by way of eerily savvy New York real-estate investments, a series of questionable medical companies, and the New York taxi business, Donald Trump’s election may have been Michael Cohen’s most lucrative venture yet. With his former boss installed in the White House, Trump’s personal lawyer and fixer began pitching himself to major companies as an invaluable political consultant—“I have the best relationship with the president on the outside, and you need to hire me,” he reportedly told prospective clients. He was occasionally successful: Swiss drugmaker Novartis shelled out a staggering $1.2 million for his esteemed services, while AT&T paid something like $600,000, and lobbying firm Squire Patton Boggs paid $500,000 for the privilege of adding Cohen to their roster. But not every company was so eager. Ford reportedly rejected Cohen’s advances, and Cohen’s white whale, the client that got away, was none other than Uber, which apparently decided that working with Cohen was too shady even for them. As The Wall Street Journal reported:

Mr. Cohen repeatedly pitched Uber, which said no, citing Mr. Cohen’s ownership of New York taxi medallions as a potential conflict of interest with the ride-hailing firm, a person close to the company said. He modified his pitch in response to those objections, reminding the company he was “the president’s lawyer,” this person said.

The company, this person said, was “bemused.”

Uber, it is fair to say, has shown itself to be far from a paragon of morality. Under Travis Kalanick, Uber came under fire for its rampantly sexist work environment, and for allegedly retaliating against employees who complained. At one point, Kalanick sent around a memo in which he detailed ground rules for a company outing, including, “Do not have sex with another employee UNLESS a) you have asked that person for that privilege and they have responded with an emphatic ‘YES! I will have sex with you’ AND b) the two (or more) of you do not work in the same chain of command. Yes, that means that Travis will be celibate on this trip. #CEOLife #FML.” Over the course of his tenure, Kalanick made jokes about picking up women on demand, and was famously caught on camera berating an Uber driver.

Nor, historically, have Uber’s business practices been entirely aboveboard. Under Kalanick, the company was infamous for plotting to sabotage its rivals, including Lyft, and it faced moral and legal backlash over its use of a secret program called Greyball, which used data gathered from the Uber app to identify and skirt law-enforcement officials and regulatory authorities. (It defended Greyball in a statement last year, telling The New York Times, “This program denies ride requests to users who are violating our terms of service—whether that’s people aiming to physically harm drivers, competitors looking to disrupt our operations, or opponents who collude with officials on secret ‘stings’ meant to entrap drivers.”) The company also employed another dubious program, Ripley, which was used to shut down its computer systems in the event of a police raid, and which was regularly activated by the team at Uber’s headquarters between early 2015 and late 2016. (“Like every company with offices around the world, we have security procedures in place to protect corporate and customer data,” Uber said in a statement to Bloomberg regarding the program. “When it comes to government investigations, it’s our policy to cooperate with all valid searches and requests for data.”) And last year, Uber admitted to paying off hackers to conceal a massive cyberattack that left the data of millions of Uber users vulnerable.

Under Kalanick, current C.E.O. Dara Khosrowshahi said earlier this year, the “moral compass of the company” was pointing in the wrong direction. Yet somehow, Cohen’s overtures raised a red flag. If the payments from Russian oligarchs and corporate supplicants weren’t evidence enough, the fact that Uber—Uber—claimed the moral high ground against Cohen is the surest sign that he and his boss are neck-deep in the very swamp they promised to drain.