Trump escalates probe attacks

WASHINGTON — The federal agents who raided the office of President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen, were looking for records about payments to a former Playboy playmate and to porn actress Stormy Daniels, who both claim to have had affairs with Trump.

That’s according to a report Tuesday from The New York Times. The newspaper, citing several people briefed on the investigation, reported that FBI agents were looking for records of payments to ex-Playmate Karen McDougal and also information related to the publisher of The National Enquirer.

The raid prompted a new blast Tuesday from the president, who tweeted that “Attorney-client privilege is dead!” And White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that the president thinks he can fire special counsel Robert Mueller, but isn’t taking that step now.

McDougal has said she carried on an affair with Trump in 2006 after the birth of his son. The Enquirer’s publisher, American Media Inc., paid McDougal $150,000 but never published her story. AMI has said she was paid to become a fitness columnist.

The Associated Press has confirmed that agents on Monday also seized records related to a $130,000 payment made to Daniels, who says she had sex with Trump in 2006.

A furious Trump, who in the past month has escalated his attacks on Mueller’s Russia investigation, said Monday from the White House that it was a “disgrace” that the FBI “broke into” his lawyer’s office. He called Mueller’s investigation “an attack on our country,” prompting new speculation that he might seek the removal of the Justice Department’s special counsel.

On Tuesday, Sanders said Trump believes the raid on Cohen’s office went “too far,” but she also said that it’s a separate investigation from Mueller’s probe. Still, Trump “certainly believes that he has the power” to directly fire Mueller, she said, and he has been advised that he has that authority. She did not say where the advice came from.