Michael Cohen has seventh meeting with Manhattan DA as Trump investigation escalates



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Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former personal attorney, said on Wednesday he met with prosecutors from the Manhattan DA’s office for the seventh time.

Michael Cohen arrives to testify before the House Oversight and Reform Committee on Capitol Hill on February 27, 2019.Mandel Ngan / AFP – Getty Images File

The meeting, which Cohen said took place above Zoom and lasted two and a half hours, comes as the former president’s sprawling tax and financial investigation intensifies.

Trump has denied any wrongdoing and called the Manhattan district attorney’s investigation a witch hunt.

Cohen says he spoke with lead investigator Mark Pomerantz, a white-collar crime expert who sidelined Mafia boss John Gotti and other organized crime figures. Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance, General Counsel Carey Dunne and Assistant DA Solomon Shinerock also participated in the appeal, according to Cohen.

Earlier this week, Trump made a quick trip to Trump Tower in New York City and left with boxes of files before returning to Mar-a-Lago, Florida.

On March 1, the Supreme Court ruled that the Manhattan district attorney could obtain Trump’s tax records from his accountants at Mazars USA, and soon after, millions of pages of documents were turned over to the prosecutor.

Vance has requested the tax returns spanning eight years for a grand jury investigation into silence payments and other financial transactions. The investigation began after it was revealed that while Trump’s attorney Cohen paid Stormy Daniels $ 130,000 to keep quiet about her claim that she had an affair with Trump, an allegation that he denied.

Cohen also alleged in Congress that the Trump organization sometimes lied about its financial situation to evade tax or obtain favorable loan terms.

Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison in 2018 after pleading guilty to making secret payments to women who claimed to have had dealings with Trump and lied to Congress about the president’s business dealings in Russia. He was released last spring from his sentence over concerns about the coronavirus.

A spokesperson for the Manhattan DA declined to comment on Wednesday.

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