Michael Cohen Says DOJ Should Check If Trump Photocopied Secret Files

• Michael Cohen is urging the DOJ to research if Trump stored photocopies of top-secret recordsdata.
• He speculated that Trump has extra recordsdata on the market that the DOJ hasn’t discovered but.
• Cohen accused Trump of utilizing “Artwork of the Deal” ways to commerce these recordsdata for different paperwork.

Michael Cohen, former President Donald Trump’s one-time private lawyer and fixer, says the Division of Justice ought to examine whether or not Trump photocopied and stored any top-secret recordsdata.

Cohen made the remark whereas talking to MSNBC host Ali Velshi on Sunday morning.

Throughout his look, Cohen responded to a report from The New York Occasions on how Trump had been angered by the Nationwide Archives and Information Administration’s refusal to offer him paperwork concerning the FBI’s probe into Russian interference within the 2016 presidential election. 

Based on The Occasions, Trump informed advisers he would give NARA the paperwork he had at Mar-a-Lago in the event that they handed over what he wished from them. 

Commenting on Trump’s actions, Cohen stated the previous president gave the impression to be utilizing a tactic from his  e book “The Artwork of the Deal” and making an attempt to commerce “this for that.”

“This complete difficulty is totally loopy. The truth that we have now to sit down there and play this recreation with a former president of the US?” Cohen stated, including that Trump was not “entitled” to the paperwork he wished.

“At the beginning, they don’t seem to be his,” Cohen added. “Second of all, we all know that he has extra paperwork. We all know that as a result of, within the file folder, it will particularly state the variety of paperwork in them. Effectively, there are extra of them clearly on the market.”

“On prime of that, we must always discover out whether or not or not he photocopied any of the paperwork as effectively,” he added.

Cohen additionally puzzled aloud why Trump — after being president for 4 years — did not try to get the paperwork whereas he was in workplace. 

A spokesman at Trump’s post-presidential press workplace didn’t instantly reply to Insider’s request for remark.

Cohen’s feedback on Sunday echoed his remarks in September about Trump seemingly having stored copies of labeled recordsdata at his kids’s houses, his Bedminster golf course in New Jersey, and Trump Tower in New York. 

Throughout its search of Mar-a-Lago on August 8, the FBI seized labeled paperwork, together with some marked “prime secret.” The DOJ is investigating whether or not Trump broke three federal legal guidelines — together with the Espionage Act — by holding the recordsdata at his Florida residence. 

In 2018, Cohen pleaded responsible to felonies, together with tax evasion, marketing campaign finance violations, and financial institution fraud. He was sentenced in December 2018 to a few years in jail and was disbarred in February 2019 by the New York Supreme Court docket. 

Since his launch, Cohen has grow to be an outspoken critic of Trump and has gleefully weighed in on the previous president’s many authorized troubles. In September, he introduced he was promoting t-shirts depicting Trump behind bars to “rejoice the autumn of the mango Mussolini.”