Nice work if you can get it

It's unclear whether (or, probably more accurately, to what extent) Trump or his administration are going to be damaged by the money to Cohen allegations, but it sure stinks of some sort of corruption (and, no, is nothing like open payments made to the Clinton Foundation.)   And what about this (via NPR):

Swiss pharma giant Novartis, which is named in the Avenatti document, confirmed to NPR that it had hired the same shell company created by Cohen to pay Daniels, Essential Consultants.

Spokeswoman Sofina Mirza-Reid said in a statement that Novartis signed a one-year agreement with Cohen and Essential Consultants in February of 2017, after Trump's inauguration. After one meeting, Mirza-Reid said, Novartis concluded that Cohen could not "provide the services that Novartis had anticipated."

Even so, because the contract "could only be terminated for cause," the pharmaceutical conglomerate continued paying Cohen a total of about $1.2 million. In short, it paid him $100,000 per month over the following year even though he was doing no work.

According to an account in the medicine and pharma trade journal Stat, Novartis company officials feared that if they tried to cancel their payments to Cohen, even though they apparently weren't getting anything from them, that might anger Trump.

The company acknowledged it has given information to Mueller's team.

Yeah, swamp really drained, wingnuts.