Federal authorities investigating whether President Trump’s former personal lawyer and fixer, Michael D. Cohen, committed bank and tax fraud have zeroed in on well over $20 million in loans obtained by taxi businesses that he and his family own, according to people familiar with the matter. Investigators are also examining whether Mr. Cohen violated campaign finance or other laws by helping to arrange financial deals to secure the silence of women who said they had affairs with Mr. Trump. The inquiry has entered the final stage and prosecutors are considering filing charges by the end of August, two of the people said. Any criminal charges against Mr. Cohen would deal a significant blow to the president. Mr. Cohen, 52, worked for the president’s company, the Trump Organization, for more than a decade. He was one of Mr. Trump’s most loyal and visible aides and called himself the president’s personal lawyer after Mr. Trump took office. The bank loans under scrutiny, the total of which has not been previously reported, came from two financial institutions in the New York region that have catered to the taxi industry, Sterling National Bank and the Melrose Credit Union, according to business records and people with knowledge of the matter, including a banker who reviewed the transactions. Federal investigators in New York are seeking to determine whether Mr. Cohen misrepresented the value of his assets to obtain the loans, which exceed $20 million. They are also examining how he handled the income from his taxi medallions and whether he failed to report it to the Internal Revenue Service. The two lenders were cited in the search warrants for raids that federal agents conducted this spring on Mr. Cohen’s office, home and a hotel room where he was staying, several of the people familiar with the matter have said. Sterling received a grand jury subpoena seeking records related to the loans, one of the people said. There is no indication that either bank suffered a loss as a result of the loans or that Mr. Cohen missed payments, which are ordinarily important aspects in a bank fraud case. While bank fraud without a loss is rarely charged on its own, it is sometimes charged in conjunction with other crimes, which may be what happens in Mr. Cohen’s case. At this late stage of the inquiry, it is still possible that Mr. Cohen may plead guilty rather than face an indictment. He has hinted publicly and has stated explicitly in private that he is eager to tell prosecutors what he knows in exchange for leniency. A cooperation agreement would likely include a provision that Mr. Cohen also provide information to the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, who is investigating possible involvement by the Trump campaign in Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election. It is unclear whether the prosecutors and Mr. Cohen’s lawyers have had detailed discussions about a potential cooperation deal, but it is unlikely that the government would bring charges without having done so. But if a plea deal is not reached, either because Mr. Cohen and prosecutors cannot agree on the terms or because prosecutors determine he does not have valuable information or is not credible, the government would likely seek to bring charges well before the midterm elections. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/19/nyregion/michael-cohen-loans-donald-trump.html
Cohen’s attorney says he sought out lawyer who took down Nixon Lanny Davis, the lawyer for President Trump’s longtime fixer Michael Cohen, has been talking to former White House counsel John Dean who helped end the presidency of Richard Nixon when he testified in the Watergate scandal, according to a report on Sunday. “I reached out to my old friend John Dean because of what he went through with Watergate, and I saw some parallels to what Michael Cohen is experiencing. I wanted to gain from John’s wisdom,” Davis told Politico. “I certainly don’t want to raise expectations that Mr. Cohen has anything like the level of deep involvement and detailed knowledge that John Dean had in the Nixon White House as a witness to Nixon’s crimes, but I did see some similarities and wanted to learn from what John went through,” Davis, a decades-long friend of Bill and Hillary Clinton told the website. https://nypost.com/2018/08/19/cohens-attorney-says-he-sought-out-lawyer-who-took-down-nixon/
