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 warrants we’ve been waiting for have arrived.<\/b>
\nWhat did the federal government know when it raided President Donald Trump\u2018s then-friend and attorney\u2019s office, home, and hotel room back in April 2018? The Michael Cohen (redacted) search warrant documents we\u2019ve 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\u2019s 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\u2018s 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 \u201cnot related in any way\u201d to the Trump campaign. Cohen would eventually plead guilty in Special Counsel Robert Mueller\u2018s 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\u2019t 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:
[Image via Yana Paskova\/Getty Images]<\/p>\n