FBI warrant to raid Trump attorney Michael Cohen covered 'hush' agreement documents relating to Stormy Daniels AND Playboy model Karen McDougal

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The FBI agents who raided the president's personal lawyer Michael Cohen's spaces were looking for records about payments to two women who had alleged affairs with President Trump – porn star Stormy Daniels and ex-Playmate Karen McDougal. 

Sources told the New York Times that investigators were interested in the role the publisher of the National Enquirer played in silencing McDougal with a $150,000 payment made by the parent company of the tabloid, American Media Inc.

Cohen, a longtime fixer for the president, has already said publicly that he paid $130,000 in hush money to Daniels in exchange for her signature on a non-disclosure agreement just weeks shy of the 2016 presidential election.  

The FBI's warrant to raid President Trump's attorney Michael Cohen's spaces included documents related to hush money payments given to Stormy Daniels (left) and former Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal (right) 

The president's personal attorney Michael Cohen is seen Tuesday entering the hotel where he's been staying, which was raided by the FBI on Monday, through a cafe entrance 

Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, has said she had a one-night stand with Trump in 2006, while McDougal alleged that she and the then-businessman had a year-long affair. 

The raids on Cohen's office, home and hotel room have rocked Washington and infuriated President Trump, who has lashed out at a number of top officials, including the special counsel, federal investigators and his own attorney general.

FBI agents swooped in on the offices of Cohen on Monday – seizing a trove of documents – and whisked off the lawyer's phone, personal computer and bank records.  

Cohen is likely being investigated for possible bank fraud and campaign finance violations. 

If Cohen did in fact lie to obtain credit from a 'federally insured financial institution', he could be charged with a felony punishable by up to 30 years in prison.

And if the payment is found to be an 'in-kind contribution' to Trump's campaign, as it came just days before the election, Cohen could be facing a second felony.

Violating campaign contribution limits is punishable by up to five years in prison. 

Additionally, the FBI warrant to raid Trump attorney Michael Cohen also was partly based on multi-million taxi portfolio Cohen owns with his wife, CNN reported.

According to a February report in The Real Deal Cohen owns a portfolio of at least 34 medallions.

Medallions, essentially permits to operate a New York taxi, have been valued at up to $1 million, although prices have plummeted in value because of Uber and other competitors.

He owns the medallions through 17 LLCs he set up. After a market value plunge, they sometimes fetch less than $200,000, putting Cohen’s investment at just a fifth of its peak value.

Cohen owns the medallions with his wife, Laura Cohen, who was born in Ukraine.

The New York Daily News reported in August that Cohen owed the state nearly $40,000 in taxes. 

He co-owned a New York City fleet of taxis 15 years ago.  

Hours after the raid at the White House, flanked by cabinet members who were there to discuss how to respond to a chemical weapons attack in Syria, Trump raged: 'They raid an office of a personal attorney early in the morning and I think it's a disgrace.'

Trump called it 'an attack on our country and what we all stand for'. 

He said agents 'broke into' Cohen's Manhattan office, although the search warrants were perfectly legal.

Trump had been meeting senior military leaders and members of his national security team - including (right) his new national security advisor John Bolton - when he launched his angry tirade against the Mueller raid

Cohen had been living at the Loews Regency on Park Avenue, close to Trump Tower, and had FBI agents raid his room there on Monday morning

Cohen's offices are in 30 Rockefeller Plaza, which is also home to many of NBC's most high-profile shows including The Today Show, Nightly News and Saturday Night Live

Trump also went after Attorney General Jeff Sessions – whose decision to recuse himself set in motion events that led to the appointment of Mueller by deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein (right) who is revealed to have okayed the raid after hearing from Mueller

Michael Cohen, a personal attorney for President Trump, had his hotel room and office both raided by the FBI acting on the instructions of the deputy attorney general

The president also called Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigators 'the most conflicted group of people I have ever seen.'

'This is the most biased group of people. These people have the biggest conflicts of interest I've ever seen. Democrats all, just about all,' Trump said, although Mueller himself is a Republican.  

Trump also went after Attorney General Jeff Sessions – whose decision to recuse himself set in motion events that led to the appointment of Mueller by deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein, who personally permitted the raid after hearing from Mueller, the New York Times reported on Tuesday. 

'He should have certainly let us know if he was going to recuse himself and we would have put a different attorney general in,' said Trump of Sessions, revising a longtime anger at the situation.

His admission that he would have replaced Sessions to head off the recusal could figure in Mueller's ongoing effort to establish obstruction of justice.

Trump continued to tout Mueller's failure to charge Trump or anyone on his team of colluding with the Russians, even as the probe continues to bring in members of his inner circle on other matters.

'They found no collusion whatsoever with Russia,' said Trump, seated in front of national security adviser John Bolton, experiencing his first day on the job.

Trump's remarks then meandered into territory explored by the Republican-led House Intelligence Committee and the early days of the Russia investigation.

They also dwelled on Rosenstein – a pivotal figure whose removal might be necessary in order to engineer Mueller's ouster.  

Continuing to go after Rosenstein, Trump said: 'But it turns out he also signed the FISA warrant - Rod Rosenstein who's in charge also signed the FISA warrant and he also signed a letter that was essentially saying to fire James Comey and he was right about that. He was absolutely right about that.'

'This is a pure and simple witch hunt,' Trump said.  

Behind closed doors, the revelation that Rosenstein had green-lit the Cohen raid, infuriated Trump, with the Washington Post reporting that he raised his voice and said openly that he wished the official wasn't on the job, and wasn't keeping prosecutors in line. 

The New York Times reported that Trump was mulling firing Rosenstein over his role in the raid. 

Those close to Trump said that Cohen's looming troubles has struck the president far harder than those of former campaign aides Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn. 

One person went so far to say that Cohen was 'the closest person to Trump that I have ever met who is not family', they told CNN.  

Trump decided on his own to directly address the FBI raid during the Syria meeting. 

It all goes back to this: Daniels claims she and Trump had an affair in 2006. She took a $130,000 payment from Cohen in return for signing a gag order just before the election. That appears to now be at the center of a federal probe

'You can see how angry he is,' one White House official said.  

Trump also repeatedly sought to cast the probe as a hindrance to his ability to conduct his office, complaining that he was trying to plan to counter a chemical weapons attack in Syria.

And he called on Justice Department investigators to focus on 'crimes' on the 'other side' – meaning Democrats and the Hillary Clinton camp. 

'It's a disgraceful situation. It's a total witch hunt. I've been saying it for a long time. I've wanted to keep it down. I've given over a million pages in documents to the special counsel,' he said.

'They continue to just go forward and here we are talking about Syria, we're talking about a lot of serious things...and I have this witch hunt constantly going on for over 12 months now. Actually it's much more than that. You could say right after I won the nomination it started.'  

'When I saw this, when I heard about it, that is a whole new level of unfairness.'   

Trump even blamed investigators allowed a raid on his attorney's office for spoiling what could have been an up day on the stock market.

'The stock market dropped a lot today as soon as they heard the noise you know of this nonsense that was going on. It dropped a lot,' Trump complained.

'It was up - it was way up. It dropped quite a bit at the end. That we have to go through that. We've had that hanging over us from the very, very beginning. And yet the other side they're not even looking.'

'And the other side is where there are crimes and those crimes are obvious - lies under oath all over the place, emails that are knocked out, that are acid washed and deleted, 33,000 emails were deleted after getting a subpoena from Congress. And nobody bothers looking at that,' Trump ranted.

The raid appears most likely to be related to Cohen's $130,000 payment to Daniels days before the election - but the FBI, Mueller, the Department of Justice and the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York all declined to comment on the purpose.

Cohen's lawyer claims the referral came from special counsel Robert Mueller's office

Bloomberg reported that Mueller had gone to Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general who oversees his probe, with information which Rosenstein decided to refer to the Manhattan US attorney.  

The raid prompted a furious response from Cohen's own attorney, who said that 'privileged communications' had been seized.

'Today the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York executed a series of search warrants and seized the privileged communications between my client, Michael Cohen, and his clients,' said Stephen Ryan.

'I have been advised by federal prosecutors that the New York action is, in part, a referral by the Office of Special Counsel, Robert Mueller,' he said.

'The decision by the US Attorney's Office in New York to conduct their investigation using search warrants is completely inappropriate and unnecessary.

'It resulted in the unnecessary seizure of protected attorney client communications between a lawyer and his clients.'  

Mueller is overseeing the probe of contacts between Russians and the Trump campaign.

CNN reported that President Trump had watched TV broadcasts of the FBI raid on his longtime personal attorney – and that he knew about the raid before the news came out. 

Stormy Daniels in her interview with Anderson Cooper to be broadcast on 60 MINUTES Sunday, March 25

Daniels is suing to have a nondisclosure agreement she and Cohen signed whereby she agreed not to disclose any details of a relationship with Trump.

Cohen says he made the payment with his own funds and without Trump's knowledge. 

Bank records have revealed he set up a Delaware LLC called Essential Solutions just weeks before the payment was made to Daniels from the LLC.

The LLC was set up on October 17, 2016, the same day that Daniels' manager Gina Rodriguez was reportedly trying to sell the porn star's story to the media.

Some 10 days later, Essential Solutions paid Daniels $130,000 after she signed an agreement not to talk about Trump.

The agreement used pseudonyms — David Dennison for Trump and Peggy Peterson for Daniels.

Agents seized tax documents and business records as they raided the Loews Regency hotel on Park Avenue where Cohen had been staying, and his office in 30 Rockefeller Plaza, just above NBC's studios.  

The raid comes just days after Trump made his first comments on the porn star aboard Air Force One Thursday – and denied any advance knowledge of the payment that appeared to benefit him and his campaign just days before the 2016 election.

Asked if he knew about the payment, the president said 'No.'

The actress Stephanie Clifford, who uses the stage name Stormy Daniels, performs at the Solid Gold Fort Lauderdale strip club on March 9, 2018 in Pompano Beach, Florida

Asked why Cohen made the payment, Trump said: 'Michael is my attorney. You'll have to ask Michael.'

Then, asked by reporters on Air Force One if he knew where the money came from, Trump said: 'No, I don't know.'

Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, is suing for relief from a non-disclosure agreement that her lawyer claims is null and invalid.  

Daniels' lawyer, Michael Avenatti, has been keeping the story in the news, now claiming he has a forensic sketch of a man who threatened her to keep quiet in 2011.

Avenatti said Cohen 'has been placed in the crosshairs by Mr Trump. He has been set up to take the fall.'

He also filed court papers Sunday to try to force Trump to answer questions about the agreement. 

Avenatti is seeking a jury trial and wants sworn testimony from Trump and Cohen about the payment made to Daniels days before the 2016 presidential election as part of a nondisclosure agreement she is seeking to invalidate.

Michael Avenatti tweeted the photo on Sunday of Stormy Daniels with Lois Gibson, who he referred to as 'the foremost forensic artist in the world'

'We're going to be releasing that tomorrow along with a significant reward asking that the public come forward,' Avenatti told CNN on Monday. 'We are very close to identifying this individual.'

He predicted that identifying the man his client says threatened her in a Las Vegas parking lot will ' tighten the noose, if you will.' 

The threat 'could only have come from one of three places,' he said confidently.

'My client, which means she threatened herself, which makes no sense; In Touch magazine, which makes no sense because why would they threaten my client relating to the publication of an interview in their own magazine?; or someone associated with Trump or the Trump Organization.' 

Daniels said in a Los Angeles court filing she always thought Trump was a party to the deal.  

'Such an agreement would not have made sense for many reasons,' she said in the filing.

'It was my understanding that Donald Trump was a party to the Settlement Agreement and that he was going to sign both documents,' Daniels said.

Her lawyer is trying to establish a basis for questioning Trump about the deal, even though he is not a signatory.  

Cohen also appears in the infamous Steele Dossier of unverified information about President Trump and ties between his associates and Russia.

He is suing Buzzfeed for publishing the document.  

Beyond warrants involving the Playmate and the porn star, it is possible investigators scooped up information of another variety.  

Cohen was in contact for the Trump Organization with Russian-American businessman Felix Sater in 2015 about a proposed Trump Tower Moscow.

In a note to Cohen reported by the New York Times, Sater wrote: 'Lets make this happen and build a Trump Moscow. And possibly fix relations between the countries by showing everyone that commerce & business are much better and more practical than politics. That should be Putins message as well, and we will help him agree on that message. Help world peace and make a lot of money, I would say that's a great lifetime goal for us to go after.'

'Our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it,' Sater wrote.

Mueller is probing an array of contacts between Trump associates and Russians.

Trump has said repeatedly there was 'no collusion.' 

The White House declined to comment on the raid when asked about it. 

Watchdog group Common Cause has filed a complaint with the Federal Elections Commission arguing that the payments to Daniels constitute a possible violation of campaign finance laws. 

Paul Ryan of Common Cause told USA Today: 'I'm happy to see the DOJ is doing its job. Donald Trump said he knew nothing about the payment to Stormy Daniels. The FBI will now quickly get to the bottom of whether Trump lied to the American people when he said no knowledge about Michael Cohen's payment to Stormy Daniels,' he said. 

Cohen also hand-delivered a so-called peace plan for Russia and Ukraine that would have lifted sanctions on Russia to fired national security advisor Michael Flynn, according to a Times report on the February delivery of a sealed plan. 

Cohen delivered it a week before Flynn resigned. 

The raid on Trump's longtime consigliere and latest twist in the Russia probe comes as Trump called out Russian President Vladimir Putin on Twitter by name for the first time following a suspected chemical weapons attack by the pro-Russia regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Syrian rebel territory.

The White House kicked out 60 Russian diplomats following the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain, and leveled new sanctions on Russian entities. 

The raid immediately raised issues of attorney-client privilege. Cohen was the president's personal lawyer during the presidential campaign, which means their communications are assumed to be beyond the reach of law enforcement and the courts.

A critical loophole exists, however: the 'crime-fraud exception.' That allows prosecutors to use privileged material if it shows a client intended to further or cover up a crime.

Because of the usually sacrosanct nature of attorney-client communications, the FBI will likely use a 'taint team' to keep prosecutors from seeing anything privileged that could later cause a criminal conviction to be voided.

Every word of Trump's rant after Mueller's FBI agents raided his personal lawyer in probe

Here is every word of what President Donald Trump said as released in a White House transcript:    

THE PRESIDENT: So I just heard that they broke into the office of one of my personal attorneys - a good man.

And it's a disgraceful situation. It's a total witch hunt. I've been saying it for a long time. I've wanted to keep it down.

We've given, I believe, over a million pages' worth of documents to the Special Counsel.

They continue to just go forward. And here we are talking about Syria and we're talking about a lot of serious things. 

We're the greatest fighting force ever. And I have this witch hunt constantly going on for over 12 months now - and actually, much more than that. You could say it was right after I won the nomination, it started.

And it's a disgrace. It's, frankly, a real disgrace. It's an attack on our country, in a true sense. It's an attack on what we all stand for.

So when I saw this and when I heard it - I heard it like you did - I said, that is really now on a whole new level of unfairness.

So this has been going on - I saw one of the reporters, who is not necessarily a fan of mine, not necessarily very good to me.

He said, in effect, that this is ridiculous; this is now getting ridiculous. They found no collusion whatsoever with Russia.

Fire and fury: Trump let loose as he hold a session with his top advisers on what to do in the aftermath of a point gas attack in Syria

The reason they found it is there was no collusion at all. No collusion. This is the most biased group of people.

These people have the biggest conflicts of interest I've ever seen.

Democrats all - or just about all - either Democrats or a couple of Republicans that worked for President Obama, they're not looking at the other side; they're not looking at the Hillary Clinton - the horrible things that she did and all of the crimes that were committed.

They're not looking at all of the things that happened that everybody is very angry about, I can tell you, from the Republican side, and I think even the independent side. They only keep looking at us.

So they find no collusion, and then they go from there and they say, 'Well, let's keep going.' 

And they raid an office of a personal attorney early in the morning. And I think it's a disgrace.

So we'll be talking about it more. But this is the most conflicted group of people I've ever seen. 

The Attorney General made a terrible mistake when he did this, and when he recused himself. 

Or he should have certainly let us know if he was going to recuse himself, and we would have used a - put a different Attorney General in. 

So he made what I consider to be a very terrible mistake for the country. But you'll figure that out.

All I can say is, after looking for a long period of time - and even before the Special Counsel - because it really started just about from the time I won the nomination. 

And you look at what took place and what happened, and it's a disgrace. It's a disgrace.

I've been President now for what seems like a lengthy period of time. We've done a fantastic job. 

We've beaten ISIS. We have just about 100 percent of the caliphate or the land. Our economy is incredible. 

The stock market dropped a lot today as soon as they heard the noise of this nonsense that's going on. It dropped a lot. It was up - way up, and then it dropped quite a bit at the end. A lot.

But that we have to go through that - we've had that hanging over us now from the very, very beginning. 

And yet the other side, they don't even bother looking. And the other side is where there are crimes, and those crimes are obvious. 

Lies, under oath, all over the place. Emails that are knocked out, that are acid-washed and deleted.

Nobody has ever seen - 33,000 emails are deleted after getting a subpoena for Congress, and nobody bothers looking at that. And many, many other things.

So I just think it's a disgrace that a thing like this can happen. With all of that being said, we are here to discuss Syria tonight. 

We're the greatest fighting force anywhere in the world. These gentlemen and ladies are incredible people, incredible talent, and we're making a decision as to what we do with respect to the horrible attack that was made near Damascus. 

And it will be met, and it will be met forcefully. And when, I will not say, because I don't like talking about the timing.

But we are developing the greatest force that we've ever had. We had $700 billion just approved, which was the reason I went along with that budget because we had to fix our military. 

General Mattis would tell you that above anybody. We had to fix our military. And right now, we're in a big process of doing that. Seven-hundred billion and then $716 billion next year.

So we're going to make a decision tonight, or very shortly thereafter. And you'll be hearing the decision. 

But we can't let atrocities like we all witnessed - and you can see that and it's horrible - we can't let that happen. In our world, we can't let that happen, especially when we're able to - because of the power of the United States, because of the power of our country - we're able to stop it.

I want to thank Ambassador John Bolton for joining us. I think he's going to be a fantastic representative of our team. 

Welcome to the White House: Trump broke aside briefly from his rant about the special counsel to single out John Bolton, his new national security advisor, for praise

He's highly respected by everybody in this room. And, John, I want to thank you very much. This is going to be a lot of work. Interesting day. He picked today as his first day. 

So, Generals, I think he picked the right day. But certainly, you're going to find it very exciting. But you are going to do a fantastic job and I appreciate you joining.

AMBASSADOR BOLTON: Thank you. It's an honor to be here.

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. Thank you all very much.

Q Are you concerned about what the FBI might find, Mr. President? Do you have any concern?

THE PRESIDENT: No, I'm not.

Q Why don't you just fire Mueller?

THE PRESIDENT: Why don't I just fire Mueller?

Q Yeah, just fire the guy.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I think it's a disgrace what's going on. We'll see what happens. But I think it's really a sad situation when you look at what happened. 

And many people have said, 'You should fire him.' Again, they found nothing. And in finding nothing, that's a big statement. 

If you know the person who's in charge of the investigation, you know about that. Deputy Rosenstein - Rod Rosenstein - he wrote the letter, very critical, of Comey.

One of the things they said: 'I fired Comey.' 

Well, I turned out to do the right thing, because if you look at all of the things that he's done and the lies, and you look at what's gone on at the FBI with the insurance policy and all of the things that happened - turned out I did the right thing.

But he signed - as you know, he also signed the FISA warrant. So Rod Rosenstein, who's in charge of this, signed a FISA warrant, and he also signed a letter that was essentially saying to fire James Comey. And he was right about that. He was absolutely right.

So we'll see what happens. I think it's disgraceful, and so does a lot of - other people. This is a pure and simple witch hunt.

Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank all very much.

Q Any more clarity on who was responsible, sir?

THE PRESIDENT: Say it?

Q Any more clarity on who was responsible for the chemical weapons attack?

THE PRESIDENT: We are getting clarity on that - who was responsible for the weapons attack. We are getting some very good clarity, actually. We have some pretty good answers.

Q What are your options?

THE PRESIDENT: We have a lot of options, militarily. And we'll be letting you know pretty soon. Probably after the fact.

Thank you all very much. 

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