An IRS analyst accused of disclosing Cohen's financial data to Avenatti

The Justice Department has accused an IRS analyst of disclosing confidential banking information from Michael Cohen, former longtime advocate of President Donald Trump, to attorney Michael Avenatti.

According to a complaint filed Thursday by the federal government, John C. Fry, who works at the IRS office in San Francisco, downloaded several confidential documents containing Cohen's banking information on May 4, 2018 and promptly called a number mobile phone associated with Avenatti. Fry was able to access these and other files that he created after the call because he helps IRS officers to review reports of suspicious activity – documents that the law requires banks and others to file when they are aware of a potentially suspicious financial transition. Cohen's accounts have generated several reports of this type.

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Cohen was Trump's personal attorney in 2016 during the presidential campaign when he had paid $ 130,000 to adult film actress Stormy Daniels to remain silent about an affair that she had had with Trump. It was subsequently discovered that the payment was potentially contrary to the Campaign Finance Act. Avenatti, last year, filed a lawsuit on behalf of Daniels in order to rescind a confidentiality agreement regarding this case.

At the end of last year, Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison for pleading guilty to tax evasion and lying to Congress about his work on the Trump tower project in Moscow. Several investigators, including special advocate Robert Mueller and his team, are looking into whether Trump's campaign officials helped Russia to interfere in the 2016 election. Cohen should begin to serve his sentence in May.

The federal complaint that was unveiled Thursday indicates that Fry verbally confessed to federal investigators that he had leaked the documents to Avenatti and had also made a similar written statement. He faces a maximum penalty of five years imprisonment and a fine of $ 250,000 when he is found guilty of unlawful disclosure of suspicious activity reports.

Only four days after Fry became aware of reports related to Cohen, Avenatti had tweeted that Cohen had been paid $ 500,000 by a company linked to a Russian oligarch. The Russian-linked payment was sent via Essential Consultants, an LLC also used by Cohen to accept payments from companies such as AT & T and Novartis, with the goal of transforming Trump's long-time repairer status into cash as companies sought to understand the nascent administration. In a document published on Twitter, Avenatti also exposed its claims, according to prosecutors.

According to the complaint, Avenatti reportedly also informed the Washington Post of an article published on May 8.

This information triggered an avalanche of information in the press. AT & T, Novartis and other companies quickly confirmed their relationship with Cohen and issued conciliation statements. But the source of the documents remained a mystery, a topic that sparked renewed interest after the New Yorker published a report by Ronan Farrow, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, starring a "head of the press." 39 law enforcement "which published his motivation for leakage of information.

The complaint, which follows the traditional protocol, is not named Farrow, but describes a "Reporter-1" who published an article for the New Yorker titled "Missing Files Motivated by Michael Cohen's Financial Data Leak" – leaving little doubt that Farrow is the journalist. to which reference is made because it is the sole signature of the article.

Thursday night, Avenatti, who was named in the indictment but who has yet to be charged with any wrongdoing, said that he had nothing hurt.

"Neither I nor R. Farrow did anything wrong or illegal with the financial information regarding Cohen's crimes (the courts ruled that the BSA did not apply – see below)," wrote Avenatti on Twitter, referring to the law on bank secrecy. "And if we did it (we did not do it), all American journalists would be jailed and unable to do their job."

Fry was released on bail of $ 50,000 and is scheduled to appear in court on March 13.