Mueller’s Team Asked About Cohen’s Personal Dealings While Working At Trump Org
Image by Getty Images
Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team has questioned witnesses about whether President Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen conducted separate personal business while employed by the Trump Organization — even after the FBI raided Cohen’s office and hotel, CNBC reported Tuesday.
The Forward exclusively reported in April that Cohen had indeed conducted his taxi medallion business using his Trump Organization email address going back at least a decade.
Cohen pleaded guilty on Aug. 21 to eight federal charges, including campaign finance violations and tax and bank fraud connected to cab businesses in New York and Chicago.
“People who were questioned about Cohen told CNBC that they told investigators they had no knowledge of any personal business the former Trump lawyer may have done while an employee of the Trump Organization,” the station reported.
But Cohen conducted an intra-family medallion transfer with the New York Taxi and Limousine Commission using his Trump Organization email address back in 2009, according to documents obtained by the Forward through a freedom of information request.
The company created to control that medallion, N.Y. Funky Taxi Corp., was connected to questionable loans Cohen received from Sterling National Bank, according to state records. Some of the loans referenced in Cohen’s guilty plea came from Sterling.
Cohen and Trump had a major falling out after the FBI raid and Cohen started to hint he would be willing to provide damaging information on the president.
He later testified during his guilty plea that Trump directed him to make illegal hush-money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy playmate Karen McDougal, both of whom claimed that they had had affairs with the future president.
Experts told CNBC that Mueller may still think Cohen has information on potential campaign collusion with Russian agents.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office is also considering state charges against the Trump Organization for its reimbursement to Cohen for his $130,000 payment to Daniels, the New York Times reported.
Contact Ben Fractenberg at [email protected] or on Twitter, @fractenberg
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
