Novartis Got Out-Lawyered by Michael Cohen for Trump Services

(Bloomberg) -- Put one in the legal win column for Michael Cohen.

Drug giant Novartis AG said Wednesday that it had paid Cohen, Trump’s legal “fixer,” more than a million dollars for what it called advice on “how the Trump administration might approach certain U.S. health-care policy matters, including the Affordable Care Act.”

After a first meeting in March 2017, they realized that Cohen and his firm Essential Consultants LLC weren’t so essential after all.

“Novartis determined that Michael Cohen and Essential Consultants would be unable to provide the services that Novartis had anticipated related to U.S. health-care policy matters and the decision was taken not to engage further,” the company said in a statement.

But the year-long contact was still in force, and the company had to keep paying him $100,000 a month for 11 more months.

“As the contract unfortunately could only be terminated for cause, payments continued to be made until the contract expired by its own terms in February 2018,” Novartis said.

©2018 Bloomberg L.P.