$1 million is a drop in the bucket for Novartis. They probably didn’t want to piss him off. They could easily have stopped paying him and let him sue, which he is good at doing.
As well, why did the Stormy payment get flagged by the bank as “suspicious.” If it was a simple “HELOC-in/Hush-Payment-to-porn-star’s-attorney-out” money trail, would that have prompted the flag? Or did the new bank account for that what-was-previously-understood-to-be-a-throwaway-LLC-to-hide-the-payment-to-the-pornstar actually start getting attention because hundreds of thousands of tainted dollars started flowing in?
The account was probably only intended to process the paymenbt to Daniels. I’m guessing Cohen set it up to process the Daniels hush money then was too lazy to set up other LLCs to cover the other incriminating transactions.
What we’ve seen of the credit ledger for this LLC is interesting. The only item we’ve seen from the debit ledger is the payment to Daniels. I bet the other transactions are…ummmmmmm…interesting.
“One Novartis employee told STAT that the arrangement was seen internally as a way to get ahead on key health care issues. The contract has come under the scrutiny of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, whose office interviewed Novartis officials last November.”
Mueller is obviously way ahead in his investigation than what gets reported in the press.
“ President Trump will lay out on Friday a broad strategy to reduce prescription drug prices, but in a break from one of his most popular campaign promises, he will not call for Medicare to negotiate lower prices with drug manufacturers, senior administration officials said.”
“As he campaigned for the presidency, Mr. Trump boldly broke with his party and embraced a longstanding Democratic proposal when he called for the federal government to use its buying power to negotiate lower drug prices for Medicare recipients. The proposal was popular with voters but not with other Republican politicians, who had been battling it for years.”