Around dawn on Monday, the FBI, with a warrant, raided the Rockefeller Centre Office and hotel room on Park Avenue of Michael Cohen, Trump’s personal lawyer, seizing emails, business records, bank statements, tax documents, and several documents. He is being investigated for a possible bank and tax fraud and possible campaign violations regarding the Stormy Daniels payment and a possible foreign support to Trump’s 2016 campaign, says a source familiar with the investigation. Cohen’s lawyer Stephen Ryan deemed the raid “inappropriate and unnecessary” and called the government tactic “wrong”.
The Stormy Daniels, an adult film star’s, case is about a claim that she had had sexual relations with Trump years ago and was paid hush money. The lawyer had paid $130,000 to the adult star’s account in a supposed exchange for her silence about the affair with Trump. Trump denied having any knowledge of the transaction.
The special counsel is also investigating a $150,000 payment to Trump’s foundation, in September 2015, by Ukrainian billionaire Victor Pinchuk. Trump believes the raid was done in an attempt to find a “collusion” with Russia, to which he repeatedly said there is none whatsoever
Trump termed the act a “witch hunt” and was fuming, even more, when it became apparent that it was his own appointees at the Justice Department and the U.S. Attorney’s office in the Southern District of New York who had signed off on the raid. He had complained before members of a meeting on a potential missile strike in Syria at the White House Cabinet Room and to reporters about the raid, calling it an “attack on our country”.
He has also slammed Attorney General Jeff Sessions on his withdrawal from the Russia collusion investigation and has said “we’ll see what happens” on whether he would fire Mueller over the raid.
The raid was first reported by the New York Times and as reported by CNN, in his first public appearance after the raid, Cohen has said that FBI agents were respectful and courteous when they raided his home and office.
