FBI Raids Trump Attorney’s Office Looking For Stormy Daniels Evidence

In this Sept. 19, 2017 file photo, President Donald Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen appears in front of members of the media after a closed-door meeting with the Senate Intelligence Committee on Capitol Hill, in Washington. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File)

Federal agents armed with search warrants have seized documents from President Donald Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen, a defense lawyer said Monday.

The raid on Cohen’s office was done by the US Attorney’s office in Manhattan and was based, in part, on a referral from special counsel Robert Mueller, according to Cohen’s lawyer, Stephen Ryan.

Ryan said in a statement:

“The decision by the US Attorney’s Office in New York to conduct their investigation using search warrants is completely inappropriate and unnecessary. It resulted in the unnecessary seizure of protected attorney-client communications between a lawyer and his clients.”

Ryan did not elaborate on the documents that were taken from Cohen’s office, the AP reports.

Cohen is Trump’s longtime personal lawyer. He has been under heavy public scrutiny in recent months for his payment of $130,000 to porn star Stormy Daniels, who claims to have had an affair with Trump in the mid-2000s.

The New York Times, which first reported on the raid, reports some of the documents seized had to do with the payment to Daniels. But its source says that is “only one of many topics being investigated” and that emails, tax documents, business records, and communications between Cohen and Trump were also taken.

Mueller is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election, and Ryan said Cohen has given congressional investigators thousands of documents related to that investigation.

Edited Via Newser