Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, used the same Delaware limited-liability company in two secret deals relating to alleged sexual encounters involving his clients, according to people familiar with the matter.
Venture capitalist Elliott Broidy paid an initial installment of $62,500 to the company, Essential Consultants LLC, as part of Mr. Cohen’s $250,000 total fee for negotiating a nondisclosure agreement related to Mr. Broidy’s affair with a former Playboy model who alleged he had impregnated her, a person familiar with the matter said.
Federal prosecutors are examining money flowing in and out of Essential Consultants as part of a broad investigation into Mr. Cohen’s activities to silence women with allegations against Mr. Trump or those in his orbit, according to people familiar with the matter.
The Wall Street Journal first reported the $1.6 million agreement between Mr. Broidy—the Republican National Committee’s deputy finance chairman with ties to Mr. Trump—and the model on Friday. Mr. Broidy later resigned his RNC post.
Mr. Cohen also used Essential Consultants to pay $130,000 to former adult-film actress Stephanie Clifford, also known as Stormy Daniels, so she wouldn’t discuss an alleged sexual encounter with Mr. Trump; the payment was made 12 days before the presidential election. Mr. Trump has said he didn’t know about the deal.
Mr. Broidy paid the remaining fee installments totaling $187,500 directly to Mr. Cohen after the Journal revealed in January that the Clifford payment was made through Essential Consultants, the person said.
Mr. Cohen and his lawyers didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The monthslong investigation stemmed partly from “suspicious activity reports” filed by banks, including one that included details of Mr. Cohen’s payment to Ms. Clifford, people familiar with the matter said.
FBI agents searched the office, home and hotel room of Mr. Cohen last Monday, seeking records of such payments, among other things. The searches were executed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as part of a probe by the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, which received a referral for the investigation by the office of special counsel Robert Mueller, according to court documents.
On Friday, the government said in a legal filing: “Given that the crimes being investigated involve acts of concealment by Cohen, the USAO-SDNY sought and obtained a search warrant—rather than using a subpoena—so that it would not have…to rely on Cohen to accurately make such a production.”
The Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office is examining whether Mr. Cohen committed bank fraud by, among other things, taking out a home-equity credit line to pay for the Clifford agreement, a person familiar with the matter said.
A spokeswoman for the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office declined to comment.
Mr. Cohen transferred the payment to an attorney for Ms. Clifford from an Essential Consultants account at First Republic Bank , according to people familiar with the matter. He has said the funds came from his home-equity line at the same bank.
Investigators are examining whether Mr. Cohen fraudulently used a bank loan for something other than the purpose he described on his loan application, the person said.
The Journal previously reported that First Republic Bank, which Mr. Cohen used to wire the payment to Ms. Clifford’s lawyer in October 2016, conducted its own investigation into the transaction after receiving a subpoena from federal authorities, according to another person familiar with the matter.
First Republic sent its findings to the Treasury Department in a so-called SAR, or suspicious-activity report, the person said. Such reports are required to be sent to the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network when banks observe transactions that have no apparent lawful purpose or deviate inexplicably from a customer’s normal bank activity.
First Republic Bank declined to comment.
Part of the investigation into Mr. Cohen involves payments made by American Media Inc., publisher of the National Enquirer, and its officials including Chairman and Chief Executive David Pecker, a person familiar with the matter said.
Mr. Cohen communicated with Mr. Pecker and AMI’s chief content officer, Dylan Howard, during the course of negotiations for AMI to pay another Playboy model, Karen McDougal, to sell her story of an alleged 2006 affair with Mr. Trump to the National Enquirer, a person familiar with the matter said.
The Journal first revealed in November 2016 that AMI paid $150,000 to Ms. McDougal for her exclusive story of the alleged affair, which it then didn’t publish, a tactic known in the tabloid world as “catch and kill.”
Ms. McDougal filed suit last month seeking to extricate herself from that contract.
A spokesman for AMI said neither Mr. Cohen nor Mr. Trump influenced the company’s editorial decisions. “It is standard practice…to make inquiries of people who might be subjects of a story through their spokesperson,” the spokesman said.
Separately, Mr. Cohen succeeded around 2013 in killing a story Us Weekly was preparing about an alleged affair between Donald Trump Jr., who had been a judge a year earlier on the television show, “Celebrity Apprentice,” and one of the contestants, Aubrey O’Day, a member of the singing duo Dumblonde, according to people familiar with the matter.
The magazine, then owned by Wenner Media, had what staffers believed to be a solid source on the alleged affair by the younger Mr. Trump and called the Trump Organization for comment, according to the people involved in the matter. They received a call back from Mr. Cohen, who threatened legal action and became so irate that they muted the call while he spoke, one of these people said.
“We were all on speakerphone and huddled around the phone,” this person said. “He was just one of these New York characters where he was just like swearing at us and totally over-the-top threatening.”
The magazine’s staff didn’t believe it was a big story that would be worth a legal fight and had a good working relationship with the elder Mr. Trump on stories related to the TV show “The Apprentice,” so they dropped the story.
The story of the alleged affair was reported in entertainment media last month when Donald Trump Jr.’s wife filed for divorce; Mr. Cohen’s involvement in the Us Weekly story hasn’t previously been reported.
—Nicole Hong, Aruna Viswanatha and Rebecca Ballhaus contributed to this article.
Write to Michael Rothfeld at michael.rothfeld@wsj.com, Erica Orden at erica.orden@wsj.com and Joe Palazzolo at joe.palazzolo@wsj.com
Michael Cohen‘s attorneys filed a letter in Manhattan federal court on Monday regarding issues of attorney-client privilege in the FBI’s seizure of his files. While the government claimed in a recent filing that they don’t believe Cohen to be practicing law much these days, the letter makes it clear that from 2017-2018, Cohen has had at least three clients for legal matters, but they refuse to say who all of them are.
The letter says that Cohen has done work for a total of 10 clients since 2017, but seven of them were for non-legal issues related to business consulting and strategic advice, so there’s no attorney-client privilege that attaches to those files. Still, Cohen’s lawyers say he has performed work involving “more direct legal advice or dispute resolution” for three separate individuals. One of them is President Donald Trump, another is Republican National Committee deputy finance chairman Elliot Broidy. The third? Unknown.
“The third legal client directed Mr. Cohen to not to [sic] reveal the identity publicly,” the letter states.
Cohen’s attorneys argue — as Trump’s attorneys did in a Sunday filing — that a neutral special master should be appointed to review the documents for privilege so that prosecutors don’t get access to protected documents. If the court appoints a special master, the letter says, Cohen’s third mystery client may allow their identity to be revealed to whomever the special master is.
The letter comes as Cohen is scheduled to appear in court Monday afternoon for a hearing on the matter. Judge Kimba Wood wants Cohen to provide information on his clients, so it remains to be seen whether she will push him to divulge all of their identities.
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