By Amy Davidson Sorkin
The New Yorker
April 10, 2018
On Monday, President Donald Trump learned that F.B.I. agents had raided an office and a hotel apartment that were the territory of Michael Cohen, his personal lawyer. Reportedly, the agents took away material that touched on aspects of the President’s own life—including a hush-money payment made to Stormy Daniels, an adult-film actress and director whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford. The raid made the President angry. It was, he said, “a whole new level of unfairness.”
“So, I just heard that they broke into the office of one of my personal attorneys—a good man,” Trump began, speaking to reporters just ahead of a meeting with military leaders. One might stop and examine those words before stepping farther into the Trumpian maelstrom. “They” were carrying a warrant that a U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York had sought and a federal judge had approved; they were not burglars in the night. According to a statement that Cohen’s lawyer gave to the press, the U.S. Attorney in question, Geoffrey Berman, had acted in response to a referral from Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating possible Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election.