No matter the number of angry public pronouncements from the president and his allies, federal investigators are continuing on with their efforts to uncover the truth about Trump and his associates’ shady dealings.
To that end, on Monday, the FBI raided the office of President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen, seizing records related to a host of topics — including, notably, the payment he facilitated in 2016 to adult film star Stormy Daniels.
That payment was hush money covering an alleged affair that Daniels had with the president; the claim from the Trump team has been that the president had no part in the deal, but that’s been disputed.
Although the raid is not, apparently, directly connected to the ongoing Russia investigation, it was reportedly carried out thanks to a referral from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office. In that light, the situation here could be similar to the one that brought former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort down on charges not necessarily directly related to Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, which Mueller has been tasked to investigate.
Stephen Ryan, serving as Cohen’s lawyer, commented on the raid as follows:
‘Today the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York executed a series of search warrants and seized the privileged communications between my client, Michael Cohen, and his clients. I have been advised by federal prosecutors that the New York action is, in part, a referral by the Office of Special Counsel, Robert Mueller.’
The materials seized from Cohen’s office include communications between him and the president, creating the need for a “special team of agents” since normally communications between a lawyer and their client are off limits, The Times notes.
What exactly this raid will mean in the long run for the president and his personal lawyer remains to be seen. In another parallel to the Manafort case, the former Trump campaign manager himself was faced with a surprise early morning FBI raid at his home in Alexandria, Virginia, last year.
