Trump furious after raids on lawyer
US PRESIDENT FOCUSES ANGER AT SPECIAL COUNSEL MUELLER AND HIS INVESTIGATION
FBI seizes computers, tax, business papers from Cohen’s home, office, hotel room
FBI agents launched a series of raids on Monday targeting Michael Cohen, President Trump’s combative personal lawyer and longtime confidant, prompting a furious denunciation from the president, who spoke for the first time in public of possibly firing special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.
Armed with court-approved search warrants, FBI agents fanned out across Manhattan and reportedly seized computers, tax documents, emails, communications and business documents from Cohen’s home, his office at a law firm in Rockefeller Centre and his hotel room on Park Avenue.
It is the first known federal investigation of a president’s lawyer in the modern era, and Trump was quick to denounce the FBI operation as a “total witch hunt” and a “disgraceful situation”.
The raids were carried out by FBI agents working with the US attorney’s office in Manhattan, which is headed by a Trump administration appointee, Geoffrey S. Berman. They acted after Mueller referred the case to them. But Trump focused his anger at Mueller and his investigation.
“It’s an attack on our country, in a true sense. It’s an attack on what we all stand for,” Trump said angrily at a White House meeting with military chiefs that was supposed to focus on a US response to a suspected poison gas attack in Syria.
Under scrutiny
“Many people have said, ‘You should fire him,’” Trump said in response to a question. “We’ll see what happens.”
Cohen has come under scrutiny in the Mueller investigation into Russian interference in the presidential election because he worked on Trump’s proposal to build a luxury development in Moscow during the campaign. The idea was dropped and the project was never built.
He also crafted a hush-money agreement with the pornographic actress known as Stormy Daniels, who said she had a sexual affair with Trump years ago.
Daniels was given $130,000 (Dh477,425) shortly before the 2016 election.