The FBI raid carried out Monday on the offices and home of Trump’s most loyal minion and personal attorney Michael Cohen, not only targeted hush money payments to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, but documents related to Cohen’s Taxi business were also seized.
Cohen has a long history of shady business dealings with ties to Russian business partners and organized crime.
Taxis!
We’ve been telling you for years that Michael Cohen’s business history couldn’t survive first contact with serious investigative scrutiny. He’s been tied his entire life to emigres from Russia and Ukraine; he’s been their business partners, and they’ve been the source of rivers of money from that part of the world which Cohen has used to make himself a very wealthy man. A number of them have reputed ties to organized crime. Taxis, real estate, casino cruise boats. These are all businesses that require large amounts of cash to operate. They’re all good ways to channel cash into the United States. With Cohen taxis have always been the biggest red flag in our reporting.
For years, Cohen was a big operator in the NYC taxi business, a business which involves the ownership of one or more of the finite number of medallions that allows you to drive a taxi. These used to be worth more than a $1 million apiece. They’ve dropped considerably with the rise of Uber. We’ve been waiting for a year for attention to turn to Cohen’s taxi business and his business partners, especially Simon Garber, a taxi magnate who has or has had major taxi holdings in cities ranging from New York to Chicago to New Orleans to Moscow. Allegra Kirkland’s July 2017 article goes into various aspects of Cohen’s businesses, including some details on the taxi business.
Cohen has been part of Mueller’s probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election for some time. “The pugnacious Manhattan lawyer’s name has cropped up in various subplots involving the Trump administration and Russian interests, from a largely unverified dossier compiled by a former British spy to an effort to get a secret Ukraine “peace plan” that would end U.S. sanctions against Russia on the desk of Trump’s first national security advisor. He’s also reportedly a person of interest in the sprawling federal investigation into Russian election meddling.”
But the investigation continues to expand and now includes Cohen’s business dealings that are very likely entangled with Trump’s business endeavors.
Trump has been secretive about his business and denies dealings with Russian investors but investigative reporting reveals ties to Russian oligarchs and the mob. Cohen, who likes to refer to himself as Ray Donovan, runs his own deals but has also served as a “deal guy” for Trump.
What Michael Cohen Knows About the Trump Organization
Cohen is often described as Trump’s personal lawyer. He is a lawyer, and he did work for Trump personally, but not in a traditional lawyerly capacity. What he did for Trump and the Trump Organization is bring in business deals. It’s more accurate to say that Cohen was one of Trump’s deal guys. Maybe the most important deal guy, after Trump’s children.
• Cohen was directly involved in the Trump Organization’s pursuit of international deals in the years leading up to Trump’s Presidential campaign. During this period, the Trump Organization did business with corrupt politicians, sanctions violators, and money launderers. A key question, which carries significant legal ramifications, is how much the company knew about these partners’ records and reputations. Michael Cohen can answer this question.
• Trump might have reason to worry about Cohen coöperating with federal investigators, but his two oldest children—Donald, Jr., and Ivanka—likely have even more reason. Cohen, Donald, Jr., and Ivanka were essentially the Trump Organization’s entire global development team when the company was shaking hands with questionable business partners around the world. If Cohen were to coöperate with investigators, they would surely ask him about Trump’s children.
Cohen’s business entanglements and deep involvement with the Trump Organization along with the fact that the recent FBI raid on his offices targeted documents related to business dealings, may signal an FBI raid on the Trump Organization is coming.