Michael Avenatti, Stormy Daniel's lawyer, has produced documents that show that a Russian Oligarch, AT&T, Novartis AG, and others have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to Michael Cohen. The payments were supposedly made to the same company, Essential Consultants, used by Cohen to pay Stormy Daniels hush money related to an alleged affair she had with Trump years before he was a presidential candidate.

The financial records, which have been reviewed by several news organizations, show that transactions totaling at least $4.4 million flowed through the account starting shortly before Trump was elected president and continuing to January of 2018.

Novartis supposedly made four payments of $99,980 each. Novartis is not commenting specifically on the payments. Novartis CEO was among 15 business leaders who were invited to dinner with President Trump at the World Economic Forum in January.

A Novartis spokesperson said in a statement that "any agreements with Essential Consultants were entered before our current CEO taking office in February of this year and have expired."