I did not know that President Trump is the same person as Michael Cohen. Unless they are, then Michael Cohen made a deal with Pharma.... just like Obama did.... You had no problem with obama making a deal, but now you have a problem with a lawyer, who did not deliver, making a deal to talk about obamacare.....

Huffington Post notes that the Big Pharma Lobby group, PHRMA, and Obama’s White House concocted the following deal as outlined in a leaked internal memo:

Commitment of up to $80 billion, but not more than $80 billion.
1. Agree to increase of Medicaid rebate from 15.1–23.1% ($34 billion)
2. Agree to get FOBs done (but no agreement on details — express disagreement on data exclusivity which both sides say does not affect the score of the legislation.) ($9 billion)
3. Sell drugs to patients in the donut hole at 50% discount ($25 billion)
This totals $68 billion
4. Companies will be assessed a tax or fee that will score at $12 billion. There was no agreement as to how or on what this tax/fee will be based.
Total: $80 billion
In exchange for these items, the White House agreed to:
1. Oppose importation
2. Oppose rebates in Medicare Part D
3. Oppose repeal of non-interference
4. Oppose opening Medicare Part B
So basically, Pharma companies collectively agreed to an $80 Billion investment in Obamacare, and in return received pricing protection for their drugs via the last 4 points above.

Ah, Yes, the New York Times. Can't understand why anybody reads that rag anymore; I won't even use
it to line my bird cage. Their latest.......Headlines that Pompeo was absent (AWOL) again, thousands of
miles away....blah....blah....blah.. He was in fact thousands of miles away......getting back (FREED) three
US citizens held by North Korea. AND arranging for our President to meet with NOKO leader Un. Pompeo
is Secretary of State......he's SUPPOSED to be thousands of miles away all the time.

The bar can't go lower than Trump, who by the way started this whole thing with the porn star in the first place.

This has a very odd sense of ironic karma that it's a porn star and paying her off that leads to his fixer and ties to Russian oligarchs and payments by US corporations that look like pay to play consulting services.

Mueller had something specific he was looking for when this oligarch was detained at the airport and had his electronics confiscated. He was on the sanctions list so anyone doing business with him was doing it illegally. Given that Cohen was served warrants soon after it would make logical sense that the two were related if Mueller could connect the Russian and Cohen.

Campaign laws prohibit taking funds from foreigners, especially sanctioned Russians. The money from AT&T and the other company, for "consulting" services? These kinds of things could be very interesting for Cohen to try to make up stories about what his services were for several hundred thousand dollars. It would make a whole lot more sense to tell the truth about what he was arranging between his boss and these companies, not to mention the truth might shave ten or twenty years off of his sentences.

Had Trump simply written a check or transferred money to Stormy from his own account like any other wealthy man would have instead of being a cheap skate moron who wanted to do it with other people's money, there would have been absolutely nothing here but poking a porn star which nobody but Melania would care about.

Cohen has no choice but to come clean on where and why money was coming from and to who and why money got paid to people. My guess is that Cohen as a fixer kicked far more money to Trump than Trump kicked back to him paying for services.