Michael Cohen began working for Donald Trump in 2007, four years after the Atlantic Casino bankruptcy.
A failed casino cruise venture by Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, was the subject of a Buzzfeed expose this week. The article alleges that Michael Cohen, who is seen as a key player in the ongoing Russian hacking investigations, failed to pay debts to vendors and banks on his failed Miami casino cruise ship, Atlantic Casino.
The story is an indication of the intense scrutiny any official in the White House faces. Even though Michael Cohen appears to have been part of the investment group in the Atlantic Casino cruise business and not the day-to-day operator, it is another piece of scandal for a Trump confidante who is already under criticism.
Atlantic Casino’s History
The Atlantic Casino sailed from Miami Beach Marina in the summer of 2003, going out to sea 3 miles into international waters, where gambling is legal. The 196-foot yacht had a capacity of 500 people, and many days its casino cruises were booked to full capacity. It was the beginning of the Poker Boom, before the UIGEA, and gambling was big business. In the boat’s first few months in operation, it appeared to be a first-class gaming venture, complete with 200 slot machines, gaming tables for blackjack and roulette, a dance floor, a full liquor bar, and buffet that contained prime rib.
Behind the scenes, things were not as good as they appeared. The owners of the Atlantic Casino owed Miami Beach Marina $2.4 million. The venture owed $950,000 to a consulting company familiar with the casino cruise business.
Managers for the Atlantic Casino told their creditors to be patient and the business would pay off. That was the refrain the company’s owner kept saying until the day the Atlantic City yacht was no longer in the marina. The Atlantic Casino business went bankrupt and closed for business.
25 Vendors Sued Michael Cohen’s Casino Cruise
Ivan Philipov was one of 25 vendors and creditors who filed lawsuits against the Atlantic Casino. As a food and beverage manager with his own Mom-and-Pop business, Mr. Philipov said he could ill afford to have a high dollar client just walk on its debts. Philipov said, “I have two kids and they owed me $4,000. That’s a lot of money to a guy like me. I never got any of it. None of the employees did.”
Nothing would be extraordinary about a Florida casino cruise business going belly-up in the early years of the 21st century. As Buzzfeed noted, dozens of such businesses closed in the decade of the 2000s. What makes the story notable is Michael Cohen’s involvement in the bankruptcy. Buzzfeed News’s Jacob Langston argues the case highlights similar character traits to Michael Cohen’s longtime boss, Donald Trump, who has incurred over 4,000 lawsuits from vendors who say Trump did not pay them.
The court records show the owners of the Atlantic Casino had contempt for the legal process. Atlantic Casino refused to send lawyers to court. They ignored court orders and motions to have them turn over documents. When a man won a lawsuit for $360,000 after he was injured due to rough weather (they should have avoided) on the casino cruise, the company simply refused to pay the man. Eventually, those vendors who got paid at all were paid pennies on the dollar.
Donald Trump’s “Pit Bull”
The Atlantic Casino fiasco was before Michael Cohen began working for Donald Trump (in 2007). At the time in 2003, Michael Cohen was a registered Democrat, though he was running for the New York City Council as a Republican. Cohen’s LinkedIn bio says he ran for the city council “at the personal request of then-Governor George Pataki“.
Because he was in New York City running for office, it has to be assumed Michael D. Cohen had a small role in the day-to-day operations of Atlantic Casino in Florida at the time.
When he began working for the Trump Organization in 2007, Michael Cohen got a reputation for being Donald Trump’s “pit bull”. During the presidential campaign, he received attention for disputing national polls which showed Trump losing to Hillary Clinton. When a reporter cited the poll numbers, Cohen said, “Who said?” While Cohen’s faith in Donald Trump’s electoral victory was vindicated, it should be noted the aggregate of the final polls had Hillary Clinton winning by 2% — which was the approximate size of her margin in the popular vote.
Michael Cohen and the Russians
Those who do not follow American politics might be wondering why anyone cares what Donald Trump’s lawyer did 14 years ago. Since Trump’s election, Michael Cohen has become embroiled in the complicated set of stories involving the Trump campaign and the Russian Federation. Because the American intelligence agencies and a variety of European private security firms have traced the Guccifer 2.0 hack to the Russian FSB, Americans have wondered whether there were ties between the campaign and Vladimir Putin’s people. Donald Trump is virtually a signular figure in American politics who says complimentary things about Vladimir Putin. His own son said the Trump’s received significant money from the Russians in a 2008 interview.
The ties with the Russians seem to be many. Donald Trump’s Commerce Secretary, Wilbur Ross, also co-owns a Cyprus bank with a Russian oligarch. When the former CEO of Deutschebank lost his job due to a $7.2 billion fine for laundering money for Russian oligarchs, he was hired by the Bank of Cyprus to be their chief executive. The Russian oligarch who owns the Bank of Cyprus once paid $100 million to Donald Trump for a $40 million Miami estate — then tore down the property. It is the largest price ever paid for a single estate in American history.
Two members of the Trump Campaign resigned when their ties to Russian or Pro-Russian Ukrainian officials began to make the campaign look bad: Paul Manafort and Carter Page. Trump’s first National Security Adviser, Gen. Michael Flynn, also resigned due to his interactions with Russian Ambassador Kisylak. Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from the Trump-Russia investigations due to mistatements about his own talks with Ambassador Kisylak.
Michael Cohen’s Ukraine-Russia Peace Plan
Thus, it became a point of contention in late February 2017 when Michael Cohen was reported to have met with a opposition Ukrainian lawmaker, Andrii Artemenko, about a peace plan for the Ukraine-Russian conflict. It was a bit irregular that a White House employee like Michael Cohen, whose wife is Ukrainian, met with the opposition party leader for a US ally. Artemenko’s plan was summarily bad for nominal US ally, Ukraine. It would have required the Ukrainian prime minister to be ousted by the United States, the Crimea to be leased to Russia for 50 to 100 years, and for sanctions for the 2014 invasion of Crimea to lifted.
When the deal became known, it was denounced by Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill, as well as America’s European allies. Soon enough, the White House denied ever supporting such a bargain and peace plan was a dead letter. Artemenko claimed Michael Cohen agreed to show his plan to Michael Flynn, an assertion that Michael Cohen and the White House denies.
Buzzfeed vs. Trump
This is not the first expose Buzzfeed News has published against Donald Trump and associates. In February 2017, Buzzfeed published explosive allegations collected by former British spy, Michael Steele, for a dossier prepared for undisclosed Democrats in the run-up to the 2016 US presidential election. The dossier claimed that the Russian spy service, the FSB (the renamed KGB), had blackmail material on Donald Trump from his 2013 visit to Russia. The blackmail material was salacious in the extreme, and became a worldwide source of memes on social media.
In the wake of the Steele dossier, Buzzfeed came under heavy criticism, both by Trump spokespeople, the right wing media, and even voices in the mainstream media. While Donald Trump critics would argue the Michael D. Cohen is more evidence of an unscruplous, crass administration, Trump supporters likely would see the story as petty and tangential.
