What did the federal government know when it raided President Donald Trump‘s then-friend and attorney’s office, home, and hotel room back in April 2018? The Michael Cohen (redacted) search warrant documents we’ve been waiting for have arrived. One of the first things that jumped out is that the FBI had been investigating Cohen for almost a year before the raids.
On July 18 and August 8 of 2017, the FBI obtained search warrants for Cohen’s gmail account and iCloud account, respectively. This was months after Trump took office.
The FBI was investigating Cohen almost a year before the raids. This is earlier than previously known.
Later on in August 2017, Cohen would admit that he emailed Vladimir Putin‘s spokesman Dmitry Peskov during the campaign about a real estate development that has since become known as the Moscow Project. Cohen said at the time that this was “not related in any way” to the Trump campaign. Cohen would eventually plead guilty in Special Counsel Robert Mueller‘s probe for lying to Congress about when Moscow Project negotiations ended. Cohen initially said January 2016, but now says conversations continued into June 2016.
What the warrants included but didn’t show was related to the campaign finance/hush payments issue. Cohen eventually pleaded guilty in the Southern District of New York for campaign finance violations related to payments of porn star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal.
Along with the warrants came a letter, identifying exhibits, the date and the details. Each exhibit is linked below:
Exhibit 1 – 18 Mag. 2969. April 8, 2018 application, affidavit, and search warrants for four premises and two cellular phones associated with Michael Cohen.
Exhibit 2 – 18 Mag. 2698. April 9, 2018 application, affidavit, and search warrant for a hotel room associated with Michael Cohen.
Exhibit 3 – 18 Mag. 1696. February 28, 2018 affidavit and search warrants for email accounts used by Michael Cohen and three other individuals.
Exhibit 4 – 18 Mag. 1697. February 28, 2018 application, affidavit, and search warrant for a device containing the results of three prior search warrants of email accounts used by Michael Cohen.
Exhibit 5 – 18 Mag. 2877. April 5, 2018 affidavit and search warrant for out of jurisdiction attachments from email search warrant included in Exhibit 3.
Exhibit 6 – 18 Mag. 2958. April 7, 2018 application, affidavit and search warrant for three devices containing the results of prior search warrants of email and iCloud accounts used by Michael Cohen.
Exhibit 7 – 18 Mag. 2957. April 7, 2018 application, affidavit and search warrant for cellphone location information for two cellular phones used by Michael Cohen.
Exhibit 8 – 18 Mag. 2974. April 8, 2018 affidavit and search warrant for cellphone location information for two cellular phones used by Michael Cohen.
[Image via Yana Paskova/Getty Images]
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