It might be jinxing it to say that it’s hard to imagine any bigger Donald Trump-related story breaking this week than the one that developed on Tuesday and Wednesday — in which it was revealed that Trump’s attorney Michael Cohen had been using the shell company he set up to pay off Stormy Daniels to take “consulting” payments from major corporations that are seeking access to the Trump administration. And like pretty much everybody else at this point, Stephen Colbert had a hard time comprehending the whole thing when he discussed the situation in his “Late Show” monologue on Wednesday night.
After recapping the basics of the whole deal, in which the story broke when Stormy Daniels’ attorney, Michael Avenatti, tweeted late Tuesday night that Cohen had accepted a $500,00 payment from a rich Russian guy who has close ties to Putin, Colbert went in on the rest of the story as it developed on Wednesday.
“Avenatti also claims that Cohen received payments from AT&T totaling $200,000 while their merger with Time Warner was pending before the Trump justice department. Now, that’s a huge accusation, and you obviously cannot say anything like that without backing it up with something — like AT&T admitting that they did it,” Colbert said.
“Okay, okay, they did it. They did it. that’s on record. But they explained they had a good reason. ‘Essential Consulting was one of several firms we engaged in early 2017 to provide insights into understanding the new administration.’ You paid for insights into this administration? He’s a horny old racist who likes cheeseburgers more than his children. $200,000, please!”
And, as we all know by now, the hits didn’t stop with AT&T.
“Cohen also got a boatload of dinero from global pharmaceutical giant Novartis. Side effects of taking money from Novartis may include a headache, nausea, and extended jail time. This payment was also confirmed by an official from Novartis who said, ‘With a new administration coming in, Cohen promised access.’ So they paid $1.2 million for access to the same administration that let Michael Wolff just sit around writing down everything he saw? No wonder drugs cost so much,” Colbert quipped.
“And these monies were paid in small increments. It wasn’t one big check for $1.2 million, or one big check for $400,000 or $200,000. They were little increments so as not to trigger mandatory federal disclosure requirements. The payments were — what’s the word I’m looking for? Bite-size? Fun-size? Crime-size! They were crime-size, just little bits of money at a time. Because the whole thing was supposed to be under the radar. So, in the words of one person close to the matter, ‘How the f— did Avenatti find out? That’s a good question. hat’s a good question. Well, given who he’s representing, I’m gonna say Avenatti started with the ‘f— ‘ and worked backwards.”
You can watch this portion of Colbert’s monologue from Wednesday’s episode of “The Late Show” in the video embedded at the top of this post.