THEBuNNY!
HUSH-MONEY PROBE Feds also hunted att’y office for taxi dirt
Inc., the company that owns The National Enquirer, last month over a $150,000 payment made for her story about an alleged year-long affair with Trump in 2007.
The publishing group, owned by a close Trump friend, never released her tale despite barring her from talking to other outlets in a so-called “catch and kill” move.
Cohen has admitted to paying Daniels $130,000 weeks ahead of the 2016 election in exchange for her signing a nondisclosure agreement that kept her from discussing her alleged tryst with Trump.
He claims the money was out of his own pocket, which could be a violation of election laws.
Trump’s reps have denied he had sex with Daniels, and he has said he was unaware of any payment to her.
Trump groused on Twitter Tuesday morning that the raid meant “attorney-client privilege is dead!”
But if he did not know Cohen was paying her, “then it seems that Trump could not have had an attorney-client relationship with Cohen regarding the Daniels payment in the first instance,” Paul Rosenzweig, a former official in President George W. Bush’s administration, wrote on the Lawfare blog.
Investigators weren’t just looking for Trump-related information — they also scoured Cohen’s files for information about his taxi medallions, according to reports.
Cohen at one point told the Real Deal website that his 16 taxi companies are managed by associates tied to the notorious “Taxi King,” Evgeny Freidman.
Freidman has his own legal troubles. He was stripped of his own 800 medallions last year before he was arrested for tax fraud.
The Justice Department is reportedly looking into whether Cohen broke campaign finance rules or committed bank fraud. PRESIDENT TRUMP believes he can fire special counsel Robert Mueller, the White House said Tuesday. “He certainly believes that he has the power to do so,” press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters during her daily briefing. Trump said he thinks that Mueller’s probe has “gone too far” after federal agents raided the offices of the President’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen, on Monday. Acting with a search warrant, the raid was carried out at least in part based on a referral from Mueller’s team to a federal prosecutor in New York. Sanders indicated that Trump has been advised that he has the authority to end Mueller’s probe. “I know a number of individuals in the legal community, and including at the Department of Justice, said he has the power to do so,” Huckabee Sanders said. Trump discussed canning Mueller in December after reports that subpoenas were issued to get his Deutsche Bank records, according to The New York Times. Under Justice Department regulations, only Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who oversees the Russia investigation, can fire Mueller (left). The regs say a special counsel can only be removed “for misconduct, dereliction of duty, incapacity, conflict of interest, or for other good cause.”