The head of a small polling firm used by President Trump Donald TrumpTrump lashes out after grand jury seated for New York criminal probe Schumer tees up vote on Jan. 6 commission bill Senators struggle to save Jan. 6 commission MORE's campaign during the 2016 election says that Michael Cohen, Trump's former lawyer, hired his firm to rig two online polls in the president's favor and paid less than half of what was owed in cash. John Gauger, director of RedFinch Solutions LLC and the chief information officer at Liberty University, told The Wall Street Journal that Cohen gave him just more than $12,000 in a Walmart shopping bag that also contained a boxing glove Cohen said was from a Brazilian mixed martial arts fighter. The cash, Gauger told the Journal, was for his firm's unsuccessful attempts to rig the polls. ADVERTISEMENT Gauger said that Cohen also directed him during that time to set up a Twitter account, "Women for Cohen," which remains active today and describes Cohen as a booster of the president and a sex symbol. Gauger's lawyer also told the Journal that Cohen promised but failed to deliver future work for the firm on behalf of the Trump campaign. “Mr. Cohen promised but never was able to develop the business he predicted,” said attorney Charles James. Cohen's deal with the company and alleged failure to pay the debt in full was mentioned in court filings last year, according to the Journal, when federal prosecutors charged Cohen with numerous financial crimes, including campaign finance violations. Cohen denied paying for the firm's services in cash in a statement to the Journal, but did not comment on whether the debt was paid in full. “All monies paid to Mr. Gauger were by check,” Cohen said, according to the newspaper. In a tweet after the Journal article was published, he said "what I did was at the direction of and for the sole benefit of" Trump. "I truly regret my blind loyalty to a man who doesn’t deserve it," he added. As for the @WSJ article on poll rigging, what I did was at the direction of and for the sole benefit of @realDonaldTrump @POTUS. I truly regret my blind loyalty to a man who doesn’t deserve it. — Michael Cohen (@MichaelCohen212) January 17, 2019 The president's former lawyer, who was sentenced to three years in prison last month for various financial crimes, has agreed to testify before the House Oversight and Reform Committee in February. Updated at 9:21 a.m.<doc-sep>In early 2015, a man who runs a small technology company showed up at Trump Tower to collect $50,000 for having helped Michael Cohen, then Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, try to rig online polls in his boss’s favor before the presidential campaign. In his Trump Organization office, Mr. Cohen surprised the man, John Gauger, by giving him both a blue Walmart bag containing between $12,000 and $13,000 in cash and, randomly, a boxing glove that Mr. Cohen said had been worn by a Brazilian mixed-martial arts fighter, Mr. Gauger said. Mr. Cohen disputed that he handed over a bag of cash. “All monies paid to Mr. Gauger were by check,” he said, offering no further comment on his ties to the consultant. In a tweet on Thursday, Mr. Cohen said Mr. Trump knew he was trying to have the polls rigged. “What I did was at the direction of and for the sole benefit of [Mr. Trump],” Mr. Cohen wrote. “I truly regret my blind loyalty to a man who doesn’t deserve it.” Michael Cohen: Full Coverage Highlights from The Wall Street Journal on Trump's former lawyer Rudy Giuliani, a lawyer for Mr. Trump, said of Mr. Cohen’s tweet: “My response will be a cleaned-up version of ‘Bullshit.’” “This is not true. The president did not know about this if it happened,” Mr. Giuliani said in an interview. Mr. Gauger owns RedFinch Solutions LLC and is chief information officer at Liberty University in Virginia, where Jerry Falwell Jr. , an evangelical leader and fervent Trump supporter, is president. Mr. Gauger said he never got the rest of what he claimed he was owed. But Mr. Cohen in early 2017 still asked for—and received—a $50,000 reimbursement from Mr. Trump and his company for the work by RedFinch, according to a government document and a person familiar with the matter. The reimbursement—made on the sole basis of a handwritten note from Mr. Cohen and paid largely out of Mr. Trump’s personal account—demonstrates the level of trust the lawyer once had within the Trump Organization, whose officials arranged the repayment. The Trump Organization declined to comment. Mr. Giuliani said: “The real takeaway from your story is, didn’t he steal $37,000?” The reimbursement was mentioned by federal prosecutors when they charged Mr. Cohen in August with eight felonies, including campaign-finance violations for arranging hush-money payments to an adult-film star and a Playboy model who allege Mr. Trump had extramarital sexual encounters with them. Prosecutors wrote in a charging document that when Mr. Cohen asked Trump Organization executives for a $130,000 reimbursement for a hush payment he made to Stephanie Clifford, the porn actress known as Stormy Daniels, he also scrawled a handwritten note asking for $50,000 he said he spent on “tech services” to aid Mr. Trump’s campaign. Prosecutors didn’t name the company providing those services, but people familiar with the matter say it was RedFinch. Mr. Cohen’s dealings with the company and Mr. Gauger haven’t previously been reported. Mr. Cohen has pleaded guilty to campaign-finance violations, tax evasion, lying to Congress and other charges. He was sentenced last month to three years in prison. None of the charges were connected to his interactions with Mr. Gauger and RedFinch. John Gauger, owner of IT firm RedFinch Solutions. Photo: Liberty University The episode further illustrates how the former self-described fixer for Mr. Trump, who incriminated the president in the hush payments, once operated in secret to advance his boss’s political fortunes. Mr. Cohen’s dealings involving Mr. Trump over the years, including during the 2016 presidential race, will be a focus of Mr. Cohen’s testimony at a Feb. 7 hearing before the House Oversight Committee. Mr. Gauger’s lawyer, Charles E. James Jr. of the firm Williams Mullen, said federal investigators interviewed Mr. Gauger about his interactions over six years with Mr. Cohen, from their first meeting in 2012 until last April, when the Federal Bureau of Investigation raided Mr. Cohen’s home, office and hotel room. Mr. Gauger, who recounted those dealings to The Wall Street Journal, said that though Mr. Cohen promised him lucrative work for the presidential campaign, his activities related to Mr. Trump consisted of trying unsuccessfully to manipulate two online polls in Mr. Trump’s favor. During the presidential race, Mr. Cohen also asked Mr. Gauger to create a Twitter account called @WomenForCohen. The account, created in May 2016 and run by a female friend of Mr. Gauger, described Mr. Cohen as a “sex symbol,” praised his looks and character, and promoted his appearances and statements boosting Mr. Trump’s candidacy. When Mr. Cohen requested the $50,000 reimbursement for technology services, he didn’t tell Trump Organization executives what specific services were performed, and they didn’t ask, people familiar with the matter said. The reimbursement he obtained for the deal with Ms. Clifford and the technology work was paid to him over the course of a year and characterized by the Trump Organization as legal fees, though it didn’t pertain to any legal work he performed at the time, prosecutors said. Overall, Mr. Cohen was paid $420,000, mostly from Mr. Trump’s personal account, including $180,000 to reimburse him for Ms. Clifford and RedFinch, a $60,000 bonus, and another $180,000 to cover taxes he would owe because the money would be declared as income, according to prosecutors. Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former personal attorney, was sentenced to three years in prison last month. In court, he said his blind loyalty to President Trump led him “to take a path of darkness.” (Photo: Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images) Richard Hasen, an election-law expert and law professor at University of California, Irvine, said Mr. Cohen had an obligation to disclose the payment to RedFinch as an independent expenditure if it was for campaign-related work he didn’t discuss with the Trump campaign. Had he coordinated with the Trump camp, the campaign would have been required to report any unpaid-for work as an in-kind contribution. The connection between Messrs. Trump and Cohen and Liberty University dates at least to 2012, when Mr. Falwell invited Mr. Trump to give a speech and Mr. Cohen accompanied him. Soon after, Mr. Gauger was introduced to Mr. Cohen, helped him set up an Instagram account and gave him his cellphone number should he need more assistance, he said. Over the next several years, Mr. Cohen asked Mr. Gauger for help with services intended to elevate positive content in internet-search results for himself and for friends, Mr. Gauger said. While he didn’t pay for most of what Mr. Gauger did, Mr. Cohen often promised to connect RedFinch with executives at Mr. Trump’s hotel and golf-course businesses, though he never did, Mr. Gauger said. In January 2014, Mr. Cohen asked Mr. Gauger to help Mr. Trump score well in a CNBC online poll to identify the country’s top business leaders by writing a computer script to repeatedly vote for him. Mr. Gauger was unable to get Mr. Trump into the top 100 candidates. In February 2015, as Mr. Trump prepared to enter the presidential race, Mr. Cohen asked him to do the same for a Drudge Report poll of potential Republican candidates, Mr. Gauger said. Mr. Trump ranked fifth, with about 24,000 votes, or 5% of the total. After making the cash payment at Trump Tower, Mr. Cohen kept saying he would pay the balance of the $50,000 but never did, Mr. Gauger said. Mr. Cohen also promised to get RedFinch work for Mr. Trump’s campaign. He set up two phone calls for Mr. Gauger with campaign officials, who didn’t hire him, he said. Newsletter Sign-up The 10-Point. A personal, guided tour to the best scoops and stories every day in The Wall Street Journal. PREVIEW “Mr. Cohen promised but never was able to develop the business he predicted,” said Mr. James, Mr. Gauger’s lawyer. Mr. Cohen did give Mr. Gauger some other paying work. Early in 2016, Mr. Cohen hired RedFinch to help create positive web content about the chief executive of CareOne Management LLC, a New Jersey assisted-living company that had given Mr. Cohen a consulting contract. Mr. Cohen sent RedFinch checks totaling $50,000 for that work, Mr. Gauger said.<doc-sep>Michael Cohen is a sexy pit bull terrier with a fantastic smile, according to a Twitter account that it turns out was started at the instruction of one Michael Cohen. Cohen – Donald Trump’s former friend, attorney and fixer, now flipper – hired an IT firm called RedFinch Solutions to manipulate an online CNBC poll about the country’s top 100 leaders, and later to run a sock-puppet Twitter account, @womenforcohen, to promote his sexual desirability, the Wall Street Journal reports. Cohen began his working relationship with RedFinch in 2012, when the company’s owner, John Gauger, helped Cohen set up his Instagram account. In 2014, Cohen reportedly asked Gauger to manipulate a CNBC poll asking people to identify the country’s top 100 business leaders. Cohen asked Gauger to write a script to repeatedly vote for Trump, according to the WSJ. His efforts were unsuccessful, as Trump did not finish even within the top 100, but it began a relationship in which Cohen would pay Gauger to engage in acts of online deception on behalf of himself and Trump. In February 2015, before Trump had entered the presidential race, Cohen asked Gauger to manipulate another online poll, this a Drudge Report vote on potential Republican candidates. Trump eventually came fifth, with about 5% of the total votes. Then, during the campaign, Cohen asked Gauger to create a Twitter account called @WomenForCohen. The account, which is still online though has not had a fresh post since 2016, claims in its bio to be run by “women who love and support Michael Cohen. Strong, pit bull, sex symbol, no nonsense, business oriented and ready to make a difference!” The tweets make continual reference to Cohen as a #realman and #pitbull. Gauger maintains his company created all these tweets at the behest of Cohen. Haters can't handle knowing that women love a REAL man! #pitbull #realman https://t.co/y4FnjV1vGU — Women For Cohen (@WomenForCohen) September 10, 2016 In one notable tweet the account claims Cohen looks “even more sexy” than a young Andy Garcia: You look even more sexy! But the closest doppelgänger for sure! #ourguy #awesome https://t.co/Gzh5sBR7Jl — Women For Cohen (@WomenForCohen) September 1, 2016 Today, Cohen has admitted that he made at least some payments to Gauger, but claims he did so only at the behest of Trump. He tweeted “As for the @WSJ article on poll rigging, what I did was at the direction of and for the sole benefit of @realDonaldTrump @POTUS. I truly regret my blind loyalty to a man who doesn’t deserve it.” Cohen has not gone into details about individual payments and the Twitter account. Gauger told the WSJ that Cohen never paid the $50,000 he was promised for his services. Instead, at a meeting at Trump Tower, Cohen handed Gauger “a blue Walmart bag containing between $12,000 and $13,000 in cash” as well as a boxing glove that Cohen claimed “had been worn by a Brazilian mixed-martial arts fighter”. Cohen denies he ever paid Gauger cash and said in a statement “all monies paid to Mr. Gauger were by cheque”.<doc-sep>
An internet technology firm has publicly accused President Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen of failing to pay for services meant to help the Trump campaign, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. According to the Journal, Cohen had hired John Gauger, who owns the small tech firm RedFinch Solutions LLC and is chief information officer at Liberty University, to try to manipulate two online polls as Trump was preparing to enter the 2016 presidential race. According to the report, Cohen agreed to pay Gauger $50,000 but failed to produce the full amount. Gauger’s account of the payment is a strange one: In his Trump Organization office, Mr. Cohen surprised [Gauger] by giving him a blue Walmart bag containing between $12,000 and $13,000 in cash and, randomly, a boxing glove that Mr. Cohen said had been worn by a Brazilian mixed-martial arts fighter… Earlier on, in 2014, Cohen had also asked Gauger to help Trump do well in a CNBC online poll ranking the country’s top business leaders. According to the Journal, Gauger was hired to write a computer script to repeatedly vote for Trump. He failed to land Trump in the top 100. As part of their agreement, Cohen also asked Gauger to create a Twitter account called “@WomenForCohen,” which was opened in 2016 and shared enthusiastic messages about Cohen’s character and appearance, and it promoted Cohen’s appearances and statements supporting Trump. The account’s profile currently reads: “Women who love and support Michael Cohen. Strong, pit bull, sex symbol, no nonsense, business oriented, and ready to make a difference!” Best looking men award goes to 👇🏻 We love you guys! #ThankYouTour2016 #MakeAmericaGreatAgain https://t.co/d4x8kYkwTn — Women For Cohen (@WomenForCohen) December 3, 2016 What a guy! You are seriously a hero @MichaelCohen212 https://t.co/KYROeTreWQ — Women For Cohen (@WomenForCohen) November 8, 2016 Haters can't handle knowing that women love a REAL man! #pitbull #realman https://t.co/y4FnjV1vGU — Women For Cohen (@WomenForCohen) September 10, 2016 You look even more sexy! But the closest doppelgänger for sure! #ourguy #awesome https://t.co/Gzh5sBR7Jl — Women For Cohen (@WomenForCohen) September 1, 2016 For this work, according to the Journal, Cohen promised and was reimbursed $50,000 by the Trump Organization, largely with funds from the president’s personal account. Cohen told the Journal that he did not pay Gauger in cash but that “all monies paid to Mr. Gauger were by check,” and he confirmed the Journal’s story to CNN and said his actions were “at the direction of and for the sole benefit of Donald J. Trump. I truly regret my blind loyalty to a man who doesn’t deserve it.” Cohen’s reimbursement for Gauger’s work came around the same time he was reimbursed for expenses related to the hush money payments for Stormy Daniels, the Journal reported. Cohen’s payments to Gauger were mentioned in the August charging documents drafted by federal prosecutors, who concluded he had not told the Trump Organization what specific “tech services” he had paid for. Cohen is expected to testify before the House Oversight Committee in February, when he will likely discuss the hush money payments and other topics related to the Trump Organization and his dealings with President Trump.