A president, his lawyer and a porn actress. Those are the key characters in a drama that has been playing out for months as the world has learned about payments made by Michael Cohen to Stormy Daniels during the final days of the 2016 presidential campaign to keep quiet about an alleged affair with Donald Trump.

Now, a Russian oligarch, a Swiss pharmaceutical company and AT&T have entered the mix thanks to a shell company Cohen set up called "Essential Consultants."

As WNYC's Andrea Bernstein and Ilya Marrtiz tell host Richard Hake, Essential Consultants is an limited liability corporation, or LLC. These companies are often used in New York real estate, and while many are legitimate, they can be a told for money laundering.

According to information released by Daniels' lawyers and confirmed by the New York Times, Cohen was not only used to make a $130,000 payment to Daniels, but took in almost $4.5 million from a variety of sources. The Russian mogul Viktor Vekselberg is one of those, alongside drug company Novartis and AT&T. Those payments are raising more questions regarding their relationships to Cohen, and why he now seems so desperate for cash that he recently refinanced his apartment for $9 million.