Dana Bash: This is so telling about where the Republican party is NEW YORK, NY - AUGUST 24: Trump Tower stands on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan on August 24, 2018 in New York City. Following new allegations over hush money that former Trump attorney Michael Cohen paid to an adult-film actress, the Manhattan district attorneyÕs office in New York City may seek criminal charges against the Trump Organization in the coming days. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images) Why GOP is standing in the way of Capitol riot investigation WASHINGTON - NOVEMBER 08: US Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner (R-VA) remarks on the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld at the US Capitol November 8, 2006 in Washington, DC. Warner said he supports President George W. Bush's nomination of former CIA Director Robert Gates for Secretary of Defense. Warner said he anticipates Gates' confirmation before the end of the year. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), joined by Senate Assistant Minority Leader John Thune (R-SD) (L) and Senate Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-MO), speaks following a Senate Republican Policy luncheon at the Russell Senate Office Building on May 18, 2021 in Washington, DC. NEW YORK, NY - AUGUST 21: Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump's former personal attorney and fixer, exits federal court, August 21, 2018 in New York City. Cohen reached an agreement with prosecutors, pleading guilty to charges involving bank fraud, tax fraud and campaign finance violations. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images) (CNN) — President Donald Trump’s former “fixer” Michael Cohen said Thursday that he paid the head of a small technology company thousands in 2015 to rig online polls at “the direction of and for the sole benefit of” Trump. Cohen was responding to a report in The Wall Street Journal that he paid John Gauger, the owner of RedFinch Solutions LLC, between $12,000 and $13,000 for activities related to Trump’s campaign, including “trying unsuccessfully to manipulate two online polls in Mr. Trump’s favor” and creating a Twitter account called “@WomenForCohen” that “praised (Cohen’s) looks and character, and promoted his appearances and statements boosting” Trump’s candidacy. In making the claim, Gauger told the paper he wasn’t fully paid for the work, though the Journal said Cohen was reimbursed $50,000 – the amount the two originally agreed on for Gauger’s services – by the Trump Organization. Gauger, according to the paper, also received a boxing glove “worn by a Brazilian mixed-martial arts fighter” along with the cash payment. The paper said that Cohen denied paying Gauger in cash, instead telling the Journal that “all monies paid to Mr. Gauger were by check” and declining to comment further. The Trump Organization did not comment to the Journal. Rudy Giuliani, an attorney for Trump, told the paper that the allegation that Cohen received more money than what he paid to Gauger shows he’s a “thief.” Later Thursday morning in a statement to CNN, Cohen 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.” CNN has reached out to the Trump Organization for response to Cohen’s claim. An attorney for Gauger said they would not comment further on the Journal’s story. The Journal said that Cohen’s reimbursement was made around the same time that he received a $130,000 reimbursement from Trump for expenses incurred during the 2016 election. CNN has previously reported that Cohen used the $130,000 as a hush money payment to a woman who allegedly had an affair with Trump, which Trump denies. Gauger told the paper that Cohen asked him in early 2014 to help Trump score well in a CNBC online poll of business leaders and a 2015 Drudge Report poll of potential Republican candidates. Gauger’s efforts for the CNBC poll were unsuccessful, according to the paper, and Trump ranked low in the Drudge Report poll. Cohen has publicly broken with Trump since cooperating with the Mueller investigation. He is expected to testify before the House Oversight Committee next month and is prepared to discuss topics related to hush money payments and aspects of the Trump Organization, including the roles of the President and his children, a source familiar with the matter has said. CNN’s Cristina Alesci contributed to this report.<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.<doc-sep>The story contains startling details: Gauger claims that he walked into Trump Tower in 2015 and was handed a Walmart bag containing about $12,000 to $13,000 in cash and a boxing glove. Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer, was reimbursed by the Trump Organization for his payment to the company, run by Liberty University official John Gauger, to the tune of $50,000, according to the story. Gauger claims he never received the full amount owed. Michael Cohen paid a technology company in 2015 to attempt to rig online polls in favor of then-candidate Donald Trump, according to a Wall Street Journal report published Thursday that details the payments. Advertisement Cohen denies that the payment was made in cash and told the Wall Street Journal that “all monies paid” were by check. The paper also reports that Gauger was asked to create a “@womenforcohen” Twitter account. The account tweeted flattering comments about Cohen and described the lawyer as a “pit bull” and “sex symbol.” Federal investigators have interviewed Gauger about his dealings with Cohen, according to the report. Cohen was sentenced in December to three years in prison after pleading guilty to a number of tax and campaign finance charges. According to the Wall Street Journal, none of those charges were related to the payments to Gauger. In a tweet on Thursday morning, Cohen placed the blame for his actions on Trump. 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 A Globe request for comment from the White House was not immediately returned. Christina Prignano can be reached at christina.prignano@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @cprignano.<doc-sep>Former attorney for President Trump, Michael Cohen, at Trump Tower in New York on January 12, 2017 Photo : Getty Images If you think that 2019 is already too weird to be real, strap in. It’s getting weirder by the day. Advertisement According to a strange new report in the Wall Street Journal, President Donald Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, hired a small tech company called RedFinch Solutions to rig online polls in favor of Trump. And in the most bizarre twist, Cohen even paid to have a vanity Twitter account made called WomenForCohen which described the attorney as “strong” a “pit bull,” and, perhaps least convincing, a “sex symbol.” Cohen pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations in November, which may effectively make President Trump an unindicted co-conspirator. Cohen has also reportedly talked with special counsel Robert Mueller about the plans for a Trump Tower in Moscow, a business deal that still hasn’t been sufficiently explored to discover if Trump is beholden to Russian interests. The fake pro-Cohen Twitter account is still active and has often retweeted accounts from Trump’s short-lived national security advisor Michael Flynn and Fox News personalities Diamond and Silk. The account would also frequently retweet Michael Cohen himself, like in this one from less than two months before the 2016 election, claiming that online polls are more accurate than polls conducted by CNN: But the story gets even weirder. According to the WSJ, the guy who operates the tiny tech company hired by Cohen, John Gauger, got stiffed on payment. Gauger also claims that the fraction of the money he was finally paid was only paid in cash that was stuffed inside of a Walmart shopping bag. Seriously. From the Wall Street Journal: In his Trump Organization office, Mr. Cohen surprised the man, John 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, Mr. Gauger said. Advertisement Gauger is also reportedly the CIO at Liberty University in Virginia, operated by Trump ally and morally confused sack of shit Jerry Falwell Jr. Falwell has been a champion of President Trump, despite Trump’s war on everything good. “Why have Americans been able to do more to help people in need around the world than any other country in history? It’s because of free enterprise, freedom, ingenuity, entrepreneurism and wealth,” Falwell told the Washington Post in an interview published earlier this month. Advertisement “A poor person never gave anyone a job. A poor person never gave anybody charity, not of any real volume. It’s just common sense to me,” Falwell continued, contradicting both the biblical stories of Jesus and mainstream Christianity. The Wall Street Journal points to two polls that were rigged by Gauger, including one on CNBC.com that predates Trump’s presidential candidacy in 2014 and claimed to rank America’s “top business leaders.” Another poll from February 2015 was featured on the Drudge Report. Gauger reportedly wrote computer scripts that would repeatedly vote for Trump, but may not have been great at his job. The Drudge Report poll only got Trump about 5 percent of the vote. Advertisement Gauger was reportedly supposed to receive $50,000 for his online poll rigging efforts—polls similar to the ones that both Trump and Fox News would often tout as proof that he was incredibly popular with Americans. Despite winning the election, Trump was actually less popular with Americans than candidate Hillary Clinton, judging by the 3 million more votes that she received. Ultimately, Cohen billed the Trump Organization for the full $50,000 despite only paying out the roughly $13,000 in cash to Gauger. And Trump’s current lawyer insists that this is evidence Cohen is a liar. Advertisement “If one thing has been established, it’s that Michael Cohen is completely untrustworthy,” Rudy Giuliani told the WSJ. To make things even more bizarre, Giuliani also claimed last night during an interview with CNN that he “never said there was no collusion between the campaign, or between people in the campaign.” Yes, Giuliani’s new tactic is to say that there was collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russia but not between President Trump himself and Russia. Advertisement Like I said, it’s only going to get weirder from here on out. [Wall Street Journal] Update, 10:25am: Michael Cohen just tweeted this from his personal account: Advertisement President Trump has yet to address the issue.<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.