Fed bank info gone in fixer file
SEX HUSH-MONEY AFFAIR
A LAW enforcement official took the risky step of leaking Michael Cohen’s confidential banking records over fears that additional information about the embattled attorney to President Trump was being withheld, according to an explosive report.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity over fears of serious legal repercussions, told The New Yorker on Wednesday that two so-called “suspicious activity reports” issued about Cohen’s financial dealings are missing from a topsecret Treasury Department database called the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.
“I have never seen something pulled off the system . . . . It’s a stockpile of information,” the whistleblower told the magazine. “When something’s not there that should be, I immediately became concerned. That’s why I came forward.”
The career official proceeded to leak the single report on Trump’s so-called “fixer” Cohen that was still in the system to multiple news outlets and Michael Avenatti, the attorney to porn star Stormy Daniels.
Avenatti released the document, which detailed multiple six-digit payments to Cohen’s First Republic bank account from corporations with business before the Trump administration, including AT&T, pharmaceutical giant Novartis and Columbus Nova, a Manhattanbased investment firm tied to a sanctioned Russian oligarch. The report also detailed a $130,000 payment Cohen made to Daniels in return for her promising to not speak publically about allegedly having sex with Trump in 2006.
But beyond those revelations, the Treasury Department whistleblower said there are two more reports describing even larger flows of money being pumped into his account.
As part the investigation, a California man who brokered a $150,000 payment to Cohen by Korea Aerospace Industries was recently questioned by the FBI, The Washington Post reported.
Cohen reportedly offered the Qatari government access to the Trump administration in exchange for $1 million in late 2016, according to the Post on Wednesday.