What Did Mueller Find in Michael Cohen's Emails?
WASHINGTON — Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation had been up and running for just two months when the special counsel set his sights on Michael Cohen, the self-described consigliere and (former) brash personal lawyer to President Trump.
According to newly released court documents, the special counsel’s office first got a search warrant to obtain emails from a Gmail account used by Cohen in July 2017 — much earlier than previously known and a mere six months into Trump’s presidency. The breadth of Mueller’s request was immense as well, seeking and receiving emails spanning January 1st, 2016 to July 18th, 2017, a period covering the 2016 presidential primaries, general election, inauguration and chaotic early months of the Trump administration.
Mueller’s July 2017 search warrant is just one of a handful of revelations contained in hundreds of pages of documents that were first filed as part of Mueller’s investigation, which was later handed off to prosecutors in the Southern District of New York.
The new search warrant documents culminated in the April 2018 raid on Cohen’s home, hotel room, office and bank safe deposit. Federal agents seized documents and other potential evidence of crimes that helped build the case against Cohen alleging tax and bank fraud and violating campaign finance law. Months later, Cohen flipped on Trump, his former boss, and agreed to cooperate with Mueller, eventually pleading guilty to lying to Congress about a potential Trump Tower Moscow real-estate deal.
Last August, Cohen plead guilty to eight counts of bank fraud, tax fraud and campaign finance violations. The campaign finance counts involved Cohen paying adult film star Stormy Daniels hush money to remain quiet about her years-old affair with Trump — payments Cohen later said he made at the direction of Trump himself, implicating the sitting president in the crime. (A judge sentenced Cohen, who has cooperated with law enforcement officials, to 36 months in prison.)
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https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/mueller-michael-cohen-810128/
