It’s unclear how long ago the wiretapping was authorized, according to NBC News, but sources told the outlet that Cohen was “wiretapped in the weeks leading up to the search warrant that occurred several weeks ago,” referring to federal authorities raiding his home, hotel room and office in April. ABC News later confirmed that federal investigators had tapped Cohen’s phones ahead of the raid.
Cohen has been embroiled in a legal battle stemming from a $130,000 “hush money” payment he made to silence Stormy Daniels, the porn star who allegedly had an affair with Trump.
According to NBC, one of the phone calls intercepted was “between the White House and one of the phone lines associated with Michael Cohen.”
Read the NBC News report here.
Trump’s new lawyer overseeing matters in the Russia investigation, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, could not confirm the report, but was “furious” about it, according to The Washington Post’s Robert Costa.
Giuliani told The Daily Beast on Thursday that he and the other lawyers on Trump’s legal team don’t believe Cohen was wiretapped.
“We think it’s going to turn out to be untrue because it would be totally illegal,” Giuliani said. “You can’t wiretap a lawyer, you certainly can’t wiretap his client who’s not involved in the investigation. No one has suggested that Trump was involved in that investigation. So they’re going to wiretap the lawyer, his client, and his client, the president of the United States? I don’t think so, not if they want to stay out of jail.”
Daniels’ attorney, Michael Avenatti, said the report of wiretapping indicated Trump and his team “have every reason to be concerned at this point.”
“I find it very ironic that now that [Giuliani is] serving as the right-hand lawyer for the president, he doesn’t believe in wiretaps,” Avenatti said on MSNBC. “Of course he got angry on the phone. The reason is because he understands he has an undisciplined client in Mr. Trump and there’s any number of things that may be found on those wiretaps or those recordings between Mr. Trump and Mr. Cohen. So they have every reason to be concerned at this point.”
Giuliani said Wednesday that Trump paid back the $130,000 to Cohen, contradicting the president’s prior attempts to distance himself from Cohen and his claim that he didn’t know about the payment.
This article has been updated with Giuliani’s comments to The Daily Beast.
Hayley Miller contributed reporting.
- This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
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