Yesterday, the FBI raided the New York City home, office and hotel room of Michael Cohen, President Trump’s personal lawyer. Cohen is under investigation for potential bank and wire fraud, and campaign finance violations.
Special counsel Robert Mueller apparently found evidence of a potential crime, but determined it’s not related to the Russia investigation. Based on this evidence, Mueller sent a referral to Federal prosecutors in New York, who then obtained the search warrant.
Because the raid was inside a lawyer’s office, the Justice Department had to sign off on it. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein gave the approval.
The FBI seized Cohen’s computer, phone, business records, tax documents, and emails about his personal finances and his clients. The seized documents reportedly include communications between Cohen and President Trump. How the government plans to tiptoe around attorney-client privilege in this situation is unknown.
This move by the Justice Department is very rare and extremely volatile if they don’t have rock solid evidence.
Meanwhile, the media is ecstatic about the seizure of records related to Cohen’s 2016 payment of $130,000 to adult-film star, Stephanie Clifford, better known as Stormy Daniels. Cohen denies the payment violated campaign finance laws. President Trump has denied the affair with Daniels and denies knowing about Cohen’s payment to her.
The truth continues to be elusive in this never-ending investigation
Michael Cohen’s lawyer, Stephen Ryan, called the raid, “completely inappropriate and unnecessary.” Of course, lawyers are paid to say stuff like that, especially if you’re a lawyer for a lawyer. Ryan also said Cohen has already fully cooperated and turned over thousands of “non-privileged” documents to congressional investigators.
The truth continues to be elusive in this never-ending investigation, but one thing is certain --- the media is utterly convinced Stormy Daniels is directly linked to Russian collusion. In fact, her name is probably Red Sparrow and she was trained by Putin himself.
The strange part of the FBI raid on Cohen’s office is that it's only kind of related to Mueller’s Russia investigation. Why does the focus of Mueller’s investigation keep expanding? It seems to be a web that grows constantly in new directions, without actually leading somewhere.
America can handle the truth in this case, whatever it is. But I’m not sure it can handle never getting to the truth.