Michael Cohen gives Manhattan DA his cell phones as hush money investigation proceeds: report

Michael Cohen, who once served as a personal attorney to former President Donald Trump, turned over his cell phones to Manhattan prosecutors this week, CNN reports.

This comes as the district attorney’s office investigates the Trump Organization’s role in the “hush money” that was given to former adult film actor Stormy Daniels during Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Cohen told CNN host Don Lemon, “Most recently, they asked for my cell phones because they want to be able to extract from it the voice recordings that I had had with Keith Davidson, former attorney to Stormy Daniels before Michael Avenatti, as well as a bunch of emails, text messages and so on.”

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Although Cohen’s cell phones were previously confiscatedfrom his home during a 2018 FBI raid, The Independent reports that the phones are “new to the district attorney.”

The former Trump attorney pleaded guilty in 2018 to coordinating the $130,000 payment to Daniels under the direction of his former boss. Now, Manhattan prosecutors are investigating whether the Trump Organization lied by disguising the hush money payment as a legal expense, which according to CNN, would be classified as a misdemeanor in New York.

Cohen commented on the recently-released video footage of Trump asserting his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination during a deposition to New York Attorney General Letitia James.

“Donald cannot keep track of the lies that he tells, and so, what better way to stop a fool from being deposed and hurting himself further than to tell him to plead the Fifth at least 400 times,” Cohen said.

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