In search warrants executed this week, FBI agents sought Michael Cohen’s communications with a bank about his taxi medallion business in addition to information about his $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels before the election, the Washington Post is reporting.
The bank is New York-based Sterling National Bank, the Post reported.
In another revelation from the FBI raid on Michael Cohen’s properties, the Post writes, investigators may be examining financial actions by Cohen that used his taxi business as collateral.
As TPM has previously reported, Cohen rubbed shoulders with Ukrainian Simon Garber and Russian Evgeny “Gene” Freidman in the taxi business, both of whom have run into financial and legal trouble during their operations.
Unnamed sources told the Washington Post that Cohen is being investigated for crimes including bank fraud and campaign finance transgressions.
Meter running out for whom, Cohen?
Or should that be up?
I guess now would be a good time to point out that IT has (maybe) begun…
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/04/12/rod-rosenstein-facing-scrutiny-from-trump-meets-with-president-at-white-house.html
The linked TPM article suggests that there were some questions about just who owned 15 separate cab companies (one medallion each or more) and who got to trouser the profits for administering them. So if Cohen was using the medallions as collateral for something else when he didn’t actually own them, or was assigning valuations that weren’t accurate, that would be anywhere from, say $5-15 million worth of bank fraud. Which starts getting into interesting territory.
What all these different piecemeal revelations of things the warrant covered tells me:
It covered the whole megillah.
Was there any spooning involved?
(h/t to @irasdad)