Michael Co­hen on No­var­tis ties: '(T)hey want­ed me to pro­vide ac­cess to gov­ern­ment, in­clud­ing the pres­i­den­t'

Michael Co­hen isn’t just call­ing Pres­i­dent — and for­mer client — Don­ald Trump a liar and a con man. He’s al­so claim­ing that phar­ma gi­ant No­var­tis had tried to set him up as a lob­by­ist for the com­pa­ny in an at­tempt to gain di­rect ac­cess to Trump and oth­er in­flu­en­tial gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials.

And that’s a far cry from the way that No­var­tis ex­ecs have char­ac­ter­ized their mo­ti­va­tion be­hind the $1.2 mil­lion con­tract, which they main­tained con­sis­tent­ly was a straight­for­ward but short-lived at­tempt to gain in­sights in­to the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion’s thoughts on health­care pol­i­cy.

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