How Courts Are Neutralizing Trump's Deceptions
On April 6, FBI agents raided the home, hotel room, and office of President Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen. We now have a sense of the scope of their search: Investigators appear to have been seeking material relating to, among other things, the Access Hollywood tape, Cohen’s payments to two women who signed nondisclosure agreements regarding their alleged affairs with Trump, and communications between Cohen and two leaders of the National Enquirer, who may have played a role in silencing stories unfavorable to Trump. And with that, two of the major stories of the last year—the Russia investigation and the president’s history of sexual impropriety and harassment—began to converge.
The convergence is not entire. The agents raiding Cohen’s office and residences were acting not on behalf of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, but for federal prosecutors for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, on the basis of a referral from Mueller’s office. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who oversees the Mueller investigation, may have signed off on suggests that federal prosecutors have been conducting an investigation into Cohen for some time.
