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Trump Donor Agreed To Give Michael Cohen $10 Million If He Lobbied For Nuclear Project

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One of President Donald Trump’s major donors once agreed to pay Michael Cohen, Trump’s then-personal lawyer, $10 million for a deal involving funding for a nuclear power project.

Franklin Haney, the donor, gave Cohen a contract in April that would promise him funding to complete a pair of unfinished nuclear reactors in Alabama, sources familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal.

Under the terms of the deal, Cohen would have been given a success fee and a monthly retainer in exchange for landing funding for the Bellefonte Nuclear Power Plant, the Thursday report said.

Cohen’s success fee would be reduced proportionally depending on how much funding he was able to secure Haney, the WSJ sources claimed.

The deal also included a $5 billion loan from the U.S. government, and had Cohen been paid the success fee, it would have been his most expensive deal post Trump becoming president. The WSJ’s sources claim Cohen used his personal relationship with the president to secure such consulting agreements.

Haney, a wealthy real estate developer, secured the deal with Cohen just days before federal agents raided the lawyer’s home.

The WSJ was not able to confirm how much Haney ultimately paid Cohen, if at all, but the report shows that Haney’s company still has a pending loan application with the U.S. Department of Energy.

Trump and Cohen have since severed ties, and investigators are currently looking into potential campaign finance violations and bank fraud surrounding Cohen’s payments on behalf of Trump, among other deals. (RELATED: Giuliani: Michael Cohen Is An ‘Unethical Scumbag’)

“Neither Mr. Haney nor Nuclear Development LLC ever entered into a contract with Michael Cohen or his affiliate for lobbying services related to the Bellefonte project,” Larry Blust, a lawyer for Haney, told the WSJ.

AT&T paid Cohen $600,000 in 2017 for insight on how Trump was going to approach its merger with Time Warner, CNBC reported.

Novartis, a Swiss pharmaceutical company, paid Cohen $1.2 million for help navigating the Affordable Care Act.

Both of these companies said Cohen did not do any substantial work for them, despite the payments, the report stated.

Cohen has never been a registered lobbyist, per public records obtained by the WSJ.

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