An IRS analyst accused of disclosing financial documents about Michael Cohen

An employee of the Internal Revenue Service has been charged with leaked confidential government reports of financial transactions by former Trump's personal attorney Michael Cohen, according to undisclosed court documents on Thursday.

John Fry, an analyst with the IRS in San Francisco, has been charged with unauthorized disclosure of suspicious activity reports, or SARs. Such reports are intended to alert government investigators to potentially illegal financial conduct, but do not necessarily indicate wrongdoing.

According to court documents, unsealed in federal court in San Francisco, Fry is accused of having shared the content of these reports with Michael Avenatti, a nationally renowned attorney representing the adult film actress Stormy Daniels in the context of a dispute arising from his complaint of sexual violence. meeting with Trump more than ten years ago. Cohen pleaded guilty last year to arranging cash payments hidden to Daniels and another woman who had also claimed to have an affair with Trump.

Fry's lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The court records show that he appeared briefly in court Thursday and that he was released on bail of $ 50,000. Court records do not indicate whether a plea has been entered.

Avenatti, who made public information by posting it on social media, did not immediately respond to a message asking for comment. He said on Twitter that he had done nothing wrong.

A Cohen lawyer declined to comment.

The Fry case is the second in recent months in which an official was accused of disclosing reports of suspicious activity involving people of interest in the case of Special Advocate Robert S. Mueller III. Mueller investigates the interference of Russia in the 2016 US election.

[Senior Treasury official charged with leaking financial documents]

In October, the Department of Justice commissioned a senior Treasury official to provide a journalist with the details of the buyback operations related to financial transactions related to former Trump campaign president Paul Manafort. to other collaborators of the president.

The new case quotes reports from The Washington Post and The New Yorker and alleges that Fry was the primary source of information for these stories.

Authorities say that on May 4, 2018, Fry used his access to a government database to search for five RSOs on Cohen and called Avenatti "immediately after downloading" the documents.

A May 8 article published by The Post and based on information provided by Avenatti, traces the cash inflows and outflows of Essential Consultants, a limited liability company that Cohen used in part to arrange a payment Secret money for Daniels during the year 2016. election campaign.

This transaction led Cohen to plead guilty to violating the campaign finance law. He has also pleaded guilty to other crimes and is expected to testify publicly before Congress next week before going to jail in early March.

Cohen is scheduled to appear Tuesday for a private hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee, his lawyer confirmed. He is also scheduled to make a public statement on Wednesday before the House Oversight Committee, followed by new private testimony on Thursday before the House Intelligence Committee.

Four days after the publication of The Post's article in May, according to the criminal complaint, Fry reportedly made an appeal to New Yorker reporter Ronan Farrow. Later in the month, Farrow wrote an article about an unidentified law enforcement official who had shared the RAD, because he had become alarmed after being unable to locate two of these documents concerning Cohen in a government database.

A New York spokeswoman declined to comment.

In the Treasury Department, officials sometimes remove searchable database SARs from searchable databases to prevent officials with no direct role in particular cases from viewing information casually, according to court documents.

The criminal complaint alleges that Fry had no valid reason related to the work of reviewing the DAS involving Cohen. While investigating Fry's phone, the investigators obtained WhatsApp text messages between Fry and Farrow during the period in question, in accordance with the criminal complaint.

According to the indictment, Fry confessed to having faced federal agents in November.

"Fry confessed to verbally providing SAR information to Avenatti. Fry also admitted to having sent to Avenatti a screenshot of the story. Fry said that Reporter-1 (Farrow) had contacted him to verify the information provided to Reporter-1 by Avenatti, "the complaint said.

After Fry was charged, Avenatti said on Twitter: "Neither I nor R. Farrow did anything wrong or illegal with the financial information about Cohen's crimes … And if we did it ( was not the case), so all journalists in America are jailed and unable to do their job. "

Matt Zapotosky contributed to this report.