A shell company that Michael Cohen used to pay hush money to a pornographic film actress received payments totaling more than $1 million from Dallas-based AT&T and a company linked to a Russian oligarch, among others with business before the Trump administration, according to documents and interviews.

Financial records reviewed by The New York Times show that Cohen, President Trump's personal lawyer and longtime fixer, used the shell company, Essential Consultants L.L.C., for an array of business activities that went far beyond what was publicly known. Transactions adding up to at least $4.4 million flowed through Essential Consultants starting shortly before Trump was elected president and continuing to January of this year, the records show.

AT&T confirmed in a statement Tuesday that it had paid the consulting firm "to provide insights into understanding the new administration." AT&T said it made the payment or payments in early 2017. It did not disclose the amount it paid and said the contract ended in December 2017.

AT&T is in the middle of a merger battle with the Justice Department, which sued to block its acquisition of the media and entertainment company Time Warner. The deal is valued at nearly $109 billion, including debt. The trial ended April 30, and a ruling is expected in mid-June.

Time Warner owns valuable TV and movie content, including networks such as CNN. During his campaign, Trump was a vocal opponent of the merger. He has frequently criticized CNN in speeches and in tweets for its political coverage, which he says has been unfair to him.

Other ties

Also among the previously unreported transactions were payments last year of about $500,000 from Columbus Nova, an investment firm in New York whose biggest client is a company controlled by Viktor Vekselberg, the Russian oligarch. A lawyer for Columbus Nova, in a statement on Tuesday, described the money as a consulting fee that had nothing to do with Vekselberg.

Other transactions described in the financial records include hundreds of thousands of dollars that Cohen received from Fortune 500 companies with business before the Trump administration, as well as smaller amounts that Cohen paid for luxury expenses such as a Mercedes-Benz and private club dues.

References to the transactions first appeared in a document posted to Twitter on Tuesday by Michael Avenatti, the lawyer for Stephanie Clifford, the adult film star who was paid $130,000 by Essential Consultants to keep quiet about her allegations of a tryst with Mr. Trump. The lawyer's six-page document, titled "Preliminary Report of Findings," does not give the source of his information but describes in detail dates, dollar amounts and parties involved in various dealings involving Cohen and his company. Most of the transactions involved two banks: First Republic Bank and City National Bank.

The Times' review of financial records confirmed much of what was in Avenatti's report. A review of documents and interviews shed additional light on Cohen's dealings with the company connected to Vekselberg, who was stopped and questioned at an airport earlier this year by investigators for Robert Mueller, the special counsel examining Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Taken together, The Times' reporting and Avenatti's document offer the most detailed picture to date of Cohen's business dealings and financial entanglements in the run-up to the election and its aftermath. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan are investigating Cohen for possible bank fraud and election-law violations, among other matters, according to people briefed on the investigation.

Stephen Ryan, a lawyer representing Cohen, declined to comment.

Clifford, whose stage name is Stormy Daniels, is suing Cohen and Trump to break her nondisclosure agreement related to the $130,000, and Avenatti has asserted that Cohen's use of Essential Consultants potentially violated banking laws. The financial records indicate that at least some of the money that passed through the company was from sources and in amounts that were inconsistent with its stated purpose.

Cohen also used the company to collect $250,000 after arranging payments in 2017 and 2018 by a major Republican donor, Elliott Broidy, to a former Playboy model he allegedly impregnated, according to news reports last month.

Among the other payments to Cohen's company described in the financial records were four for $99,980 each between October and January by Novartis Investments S.A.R.L., a subsidiary of Novartis, the multinational pharmaceutical giant based in Switzerland.

Novartis — whose chief executive was among 15 business leaders invited to dinner with Trump at the World Economic Forum in January — spent more than $10 million on lobbying in Washington last year and frequently seeks approvals from federal drug regulators. Novartis said in a statement that its agreement with Essential Consultants had expired.

In addition, Korea Aerospace Industries paid Cohen's company $150,000 last November, according to the records. The company, an aircraft manufacturer, is a partner with Lockheed Martin, the U.S. defense contractor, in a competition for a multibillion-dollar contract to provide trainer jets for the Air Force. The contract is expected to be awarded this year. A representative for Korea Aerospace declined to comment.

AT&T payments

AT&T made four payments totaling $200,000 between last October and January of this year, according to the documents. That conflicted with the timeline that AT&T described in its statement.

"Essential Consulting was one of several firms we engaged in early 2017 to provide insights into understanding the new administration," the company's statement says. "They did no legal or lobbying work for us, and the contract ended in December 2017."

AT&T and Time Warner entered into a merger agreement in October 2016, and the Justice Department filed its antitrust suit last November.

In the months leading up to the trial of the suit, AT&T requested White House communications between Trump and the Justice Department. It argued that political considerations had influenced the Justice Department to take up the case. On the campaign trail, Trump described the merger as an "example of the power structure I'm fighting."

AT&T chief executive Randall Stephenson made several comments about Trump's possible influence in the antitrust case. He called it "the big elephant in the room" in a CNBC interview in February.

AT&T also faces new scrutiny from the Justice Department, which is investigating whether the company and its rival Verizon colluded to make it harder for customers to switch carriers.

Even though AT&T faced pushback over the merger, it has had significant wins in Washington during the Trump administration. It was one of the strongest corporate advocates for tax reform. Its Dallas headquarters hosted a fireside chat for employees with Stephenson and Texas Republican Rep. Kevin Brady, the House's top tax writer as chairman of its Ways and Means Committee. The new Trump-appointed Federal Communications Committee leadership rolled back Obama-era net neutrality rules that AT&T opposed.

And during a White House visit last June, Trump praised Stephenson for reinventing the legacy telecom company, and Stephenson in turn commended Trump for rolling back regulations.

Other dealings

The payments by Columbus Nova occurred between January and August of last year. Andrew Intrater, the company's American chief executive and Vekselberg's cousin, donated $250,000 to Trump's inauguration, campaign finance records show. He and Vekselberg attended the event together and met with Cohen there, according to a person briefed on the matter. Columbus Nova retained Cohen as a consultant soon afterward.

The consulting deal was worth $1 million and was supposed to last a year, according to documents reviewed by The Times. But Columbus Nova decided to end the agreement midway through after it yielded a few investment ideas but no actual deals.

A person close to Intrater said that he had had no idea that Essential Consultants had been used for the separate payment to Clifford and that he had hired a number of other consultants at the time for similar prices.

"Columbus Nova is a management company solely owned and controlled by Americans," said Richard Owens, a lawyer for Intrater and Columbus Nova. "After the inauguration, the firm hired Michael Cohen as a business consultant regarding potential sources of capital and potential investments in real estate and other ventures. Reports today that Viktor Vekselberg used Columbus Nova as a conduit for payments to Michael Cohen are false. Neither Viktor Vekselberg nor anyone else other than Columbus Nova's owners were involved in the decision to hire Cohen or provide funding for his engagement."

A lawyer for Vekselberg did not respond to a request for comment.

In addition to questioning Vekselberg, Mueller's investigators have interviewed Intrater, though there is no indication that either man is suspected of wrongdoing, The Times reported last week.

The person close to Intrater said that he had been encouraged to attend the inauguration by an American friend, unrelated to Cohen, and that he had wanted to use the trip as an opportunity to meet with business associates in Washington.

Vekselberg has invested in Columbus Nova's private equity funds through his sprawling Russian-based conglomerate, the Renova Group, which operates in the energy sector and elsewhere. Vekselberg was one of seven Kremlin-linked oligarchs hit with sanctions in April by the Trump administration, which also imposed the penalties on the Renova Group.

Renova has had a financial relationship with VTB, one of the largest state-owned banks in Russia, according to documents that were part of the "Panama Papers" leak of files from an offshore law firm. The documents show that VTB and a subsidiary, VTB Capital, lent or invested at least $350 million in Vekselberg's companies. The current state of the debt is unclear, though one document suggests it was discharged in 2010.

Cohen created Essential Consultants in Delaware less than two weeks before he completed his deal with Clifford, who is now contesting her contract with Cohen as invalid. Cohen initially said he paid her out of his own pocket by way of a home equity line of credit.

But last week, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, now an attorney for Trump, said that Trump had reimbursed Cohen through several $35,000 monthly transactions that amounted to more than $400,000 — covering the payment to Clifford and, he said, other "incidental expenses."

The New York Times. Staff writer Melissa Repko contributed to this report.