More Cohen details out

NEW YORK — Federal prosecutors revealed Friday that their probe of President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, involved suspected fraud and the attorney’s personal business dealings, and was going on long enough that investigators had already covertly obtained his emails.

The details in court papers came as lawyers for Cohen and Trump sought to block the Justice Department from examining records and electronic devices, including two cellphones, seized by the FBI on Monday from Cohen’s residences, office and safety deposit box. had tried to stymie an FBI probe into the Clinton Foundation.

The report immediately provided fodder for Trump’s public attacks on Mccabe, a longtime target of the president’s ire, especially because of revelations that his wife, during a failed state Senate run, had accepted campaign contributions in 2015 from the political action committee of then-virginia Gov. Terry Mcauliffe, a close Clinton ally.

A lawyer for Mccabe, Michael Bromwich, said on Twitter that he was considering filing a defamation lawsuit against Trump and his “colleagues.”

The inspector general report was sent to congressional committees and obtained by The Associated Press.

The findings, which had trickled out in news reports over the last month, led FBI disciplinary officials to recommend that the Justice Department fire Mccabe. Attorney General Jeff Sessions dismissed him March 16 for what he described as a lack of candor.