After a Republican congressman suggested that Michael Cohen's attorney Lanny Davis has an ulterior motive, one Washington Post reporter destroyed the conspiracy theory.
During Cohen's Capitol Hill hearing before the House Oversight Committee, Reps. Mark Meadows (R-NC) and Jim Jordan (R-OH) both asked the newly-disbarred attorney how much his lawyer was making — and Cohen responded that Davis is working for him for free.
Meadows even went so far as to suggest Tom Steyer, a billionaire known for his fundraising to impeach Donald Trump, is paying Davis.
As the Post's Aaron Blake pointed out, however, Trump's own attorney — Rudy Giuliani — is also working for free.
Indeed, in November 2018, ProPublica did an analysis of Giuliani's sources of income given that the president does not pay him.
The no-payment arrangement was also mentioned by the New York Times in a December 2018 article about the former New York City mayor's foreign business interests.