What may be, what history may see, as the moment when Stormy Daniels pushed the special prosecutor closer to getting fired than anyone before her has done. It is this has been a remarkable saga all along. Obviously the news sort of blew up in the face of this today. I felt like the thing that this really brought home for me is that the president has really not put together an actual legal team on the russia scandal. He actually does have some real lawyers on the Stormy Daniels scandal. He has moichael cohen but he ha additional lawyers working with him on the scandals where these women have been supposedly paid off. Thats where he lawyered up. Maybe the president saw this before we did in terms of the legal jeopardy hes in here. And moving todays case to the south everyone district of new york is fascinating because as you know they do not have a confirmed u. S. Attorney working there. The u. S. Attorney whos in place there, temporarily, his appointment is a 120day appointment that run
They proceeded with this search, to r according to cohens own attorney, after they were contacted by the special counsel robert mule who are said this is not within my bailiwick but you mi might do this yourselves. Cohens attorney called it inappropriate and unnecessary. Because cohen has been cooperating with investigators so far. So they took records, my sources tell me, related to his legal clients and that includes the president and as well as his personal finances. One of my sources said, anderson, that when you look at this, the search warrant, and we have not read it, but my source said that it is largely related to Stormy Daniels and then there were subsets of it in which there was discussion of payments made to her, of communications with the president about the Stormy Daniels case, and potentially communications with the campaign about it. I mean, youll recall Michael Cohen was not a member of the campaign officially, but he did talk to a lot of people of the campaign about i
Mueller has been willing to use fairly aggressive tactics to get his hands on information and evidence and even people that he and his team think are relevant to their investigation. There was famously the noknock search warrant that the mueller team executed on former Trump Campaign chairman Paul Manaforts house in virginia. That was in the wee hours of the morning one day last summer. They picked the lock, they stormed in, they took binders full of documents and computer files. Paul manaforts first notice that they were there was when they knocked on his bedroom door. Because they didnt knock on the front door. And then once they knocked on the bedroom door they came in and photographed his expensive suits in his closet for evidence. The special counsels team also got a search warrant in may of last year for a storage locker that belonged to Paul Manafort. Accord informing a new court filing from manaforts lawyer, the way the fbi got access to that storage locker in the first place i
Attorneys 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 steven ryan, his lawyer. 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. Lets just remind our viewers again as we said at the top, cohen at the center of two political and legal storms for donald trump, both a payment to porn star Stormy Daniels and he is said to be of interest to special Counsel Robert Mueller for his dealings for Trump Organization and questions around any ties to russia. Peter baker, chief White House Correspondent for the New York Times is with us. Peter, i know this is your colleagues story, but any sense of, of from the white house that Something Like this could have been imminent after all of the headlines and after the president himself going to the back of air force one at the end of l
Block government investigators from reviewing documents that the fbi seized from his office and residence last week. Cohen is expected to say that he should be allowed to determine which documents might be covered by Attorney Client privilege, and if thats not the case, it should be a special master who should be appointed to review the material. Other than attorneys on the president s payroll sent a letter to that same judge arguing that President Trump should be the one to decide. In addition to cohen, adult film star Stormy Daniels is expected to attend. Cohen paid daniels 130,000 as part of a nondisclosure agreement. Daniels claims she was paid to keep quiet about an alleged sexual relationship with the president. The president has consistently denied those charges. Nbcs tom winter is outside the federal courthouse in new york for us this afternoon. Tom, tell us a little bit more about this this letter that Michael Cohen sent to the judge this morning. Reporter so, craig, this was