Cohen monitored before FBI raid

legal team and has been on a media blitz over the past 24 hours, argued that reports of a phone tap were bogus.

‘‘We don’t believe it’s true. I keep hearing different stories from different sources,’’ he told the New York Daily News ‘‘We think it’s going to turn out to be untrue because it would be totally illegal. You can’t wiretap a lawyer, let alone the president’s lawyer.’’

Federal prosecutors have already revealed they obtained ‘‘covert’’ search warrants on multiple email accounts belonging to Cohen, according court filings.

But evidence of a wiretap was not immediately clear in the heavily redacted documents related to the raid.

Former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti, now a partner at Thompson Coburn LLP, noted that the bar for wiretapping a suspect is high, even more so when the target is a lawyer.

‘‘Obtaining a wiretap on an attorney is so highly unusual that in my nine years as a federal prosecutor I can’t recall anyone obtaining one on a working lawyer,’’ he told the Daily News.

‘‘This is a very unusual situation. It would have had to be vetted at the highest level of the DOJ.

‘‘It’s the attorney of the president of the United States of America.’’

Prosecutors would have had to prove to a judge that they believed Cohen was using his phone to engage in criminal activity.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said yesterday that she could not ‘‘verify the validity’’ of the NBC report.

‘‘I would refer you to the president’s outside counsel about any concerns of wiretapping,’’ Sanders said.

During the briefing, Sanders said she was unsure of when Trump and Cohen last spoke, and said she is ‘‘not aware of specific’’ matters where Cohen is rep- resenting the president.

The Department of Justice declined to comment.

Trump publicly fumed in the weeks after the raid of his longtime ‘‘fixer,’’ saying the FBI ‘‘broke in’’ and calling it ‘‘a witch hunt’’ and ‘‘ an attack on our country.’’

The Feds seized reams of documents, several cellphones and computer hard drives in their search.

Investigators were reportedly targeting information on a campaign-era payout Cohen made to porn star Stormy Daniels in an attempt to squash her alleged 2006 fling with the future president. Trump for the first time admitted yesterday that he reimbursed Cohen for the $130,000 he used to keep the adult film star from going public.

- New York Daily News