A conservative advocacy group is demanding the Justice Department hand over all of its records dealing with the FBI’s raids of Michael Cohen, President Trump’s longtime personal lawyer.
Judicial Watch said the raids were “abusive” and “out of line” and filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Monday. The group said the department ignored three information requests from the nonprofit organization pertaining to the FBI’s April 9 raids of Cohen’s New York City home, office, and hotel room.
The FBI conducted the raids as part of an ongoing criminal investigation into Cohen’s conduct as Trump’s “fix-it” man, which was launched by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York. Cohen has not been charged with a crime, but New York federal prosecutors are probing whether he committed bank and wire fraud or broke any campaign finance laws.
The operation, prompted by a referral from special counsel Robert Mueller, targeted communications between Cohen and Trump, including those dealing with a $130,000 hush money payment made to porn star Stormy Daniels to keep quiet about an alleged extramarital affair she had with Trump more than a decade ago.
“On its face, the raid on then-President Trump’s lawyer seemed abusive and out of line,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a statement. “And so it is not surprising that the Mueller Special Counsel and the Justice Department would ignore FOIA law and refuse to respond to our basic requests for information about this extraordinary raid.”
The lawsuit was filed after Cohen giving a rare TV interview to ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Monday, in which he said his “first loyalty” was to his family and the country.
