The line of inquiry stems from claims made by the president’s former personal lawyer and fixer, Michael D. Cohen, who told Congress earlier this year that the lawyers in question helped edit false testimony that he provided to Congress in 2017

A hotly-debated McClatchy story from December reported that four sources said a cell phone traced back to Cohen sent signals that ricocheted off cell towers in the Prague area in late summer 2016

Newly released documents that were used to get search warrants for former Trump attorney Michael Cohen include a lengthy section related to an “illegal campaign contribution scheme” that is completely redacted.

The records show that Mr. Cohen’s business dealings had already been the subject of an extensive investigation by the time F.B.I. agents conducted a highly public raid on his home and office last April.

Whitaker also did not deny talking with President Donald Trump about Cohen's case

The lawyer, Robert J. Costello, had about a dozen conversations with Mr. Trump’s lead lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani

In fact, the popular 1990 single that Brooks recorded is titled, “Friends in Low Places.”

Cohen’s testimony may overshadow Trump’s high-profile diplomacy with North Korea.

...that he says were reimbursements for the $130,000 hush money payment he made to porn star Stormy Daniels weeks before the 2016 election.

‘I Find It Ironic, President Trump, That You Are in Vietnam Right Now’

This was when Barack Obama was president of the United States.

“I’m giving the committee today copies of a letter I sent at Mr Trump’s direction threatening these schools with civil and criminal actions if Mr Trump’s grades or SAT scores were ever disclosed without his permission.”

He told reporters his tweet wasn't witness-tampering, but instead was "witness-testing."

The decision applies only to New York State, the only place where he was admitted to the Bar.

Cohen would not be allowed to discuss matters related to Russia, including a proposed Trump Tower project in Moscow under scrutiny by the special counsel

Cohen had been scheduled to report to prison on March 6

House Democrats are now pursuing a formal deposition of Whitaker as they scrutinize whether he committed perjury.

Cohen, you may recall, made secret recordings of conversations he had in the past.

As a candidate, Donald Trump had a lot of praise for Vladimir Putin — and no business, he kept insisting, in Russia. These documents tell a different story.

Senate Intelligence traditionally does their interviews behind closed doors, not publicly.

...citing Mr. Trump’s verbal attacks on Mr. Cohen’s family in the days since he scheduled his appearance on Capitol Hill.

Otisville’s camp has long been the lockup of choice among Jewish white-collar offenders

His campaign was a marketing venture. That’s why he didn’t want to put business on hold.

“BuzzFeed News stands by this story 100%”

“BuzzFeed’s description of specific statements to the special counsel’s office, and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office, regarding Michael Cohen’s congressional testimony are not accurate”

Trump received 10 personal updates from Michael Cohen and encouraged a planned meeting with Vladimir Putin.

...a Walmart bag, blue, containing somewhere over $12,000 in cash and a boxing glove that Michael Cohen, then Trump’s personal attorney, claimed had been owned by a Brazilian fighter.

–Michael Cohen

Behind the scenes, Michael Cohen hired RedFinch Solutions, then allegedly stiffed it—and his boss

Cohen has agreed to testify publicly before the panel on February 7

–Michael Cohen

The phone and surveillance data [...] lend new credence to a key part of a former British spy’s dossier of Kremlin intelligence describing purported coordination between Trump’s campaign and Russia’s election meddling operation.

because then-candidate Trump “was very concerned about how this would affect the election” if their allegations of affairs became public

In addition to serving as a senior adviser in the White House, he would also be playing the role of the main conduit between Trump and his friend David Pecker, the National Enquirer publisher and chief executive of AMI

...just hours before the lawyer was sentenced to three years in jail Wednesday.

Cohen had pleaded guilty to nine federal charges of tax evasion, violating campaign finance laws, lying to banks and to Congress.

...followed by three years of supervised release

Trump on Monday sought to downplay the felony his former personal attorney Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to this month

...they have continued to scrutinize what other executives in the president’s family business may have known about those crimes

Trump told reporters he has not read the court filings, which detail alleged lies Cohen and Manafort told publicly and to investigators.

The president said on Twitter that Friday’s news “totally clears the President. Thank you!” It does not. Manafort and Cohen are in trouble, and so is Trump.

...but asked that a judge consider his cooperation with the special counsel's Russia probe and other investigations in his sentencing.

The president praised Roger Stone for refusing to testify against him and bashed Michael Cohen for cooperating

Cohen kept Trump “apprised” of his contacts with Russia during the campaign.

“Michael regrets that his vigor in promoting Client-1’s interests in the heat of political battle led him to abandon good judgment and cross legal lines”

...people close to the President assured Cohen that Trump would take care of him.

“Buddy,” Mr. Sater wrote, “our boy can become President of the USA and we can engineer it.”

Trump apparently did not know or did not care that the special counsel had released email evidence bolstering Mr. Cohen’s current position.

The revelation that representatives of the Trump Organization planned to forge direct financial links with the leader of a hostile nation at the height of the campaign raises fresh questions about President Trump's relationship with the Kremlin.

Importantly, though, the regulations do not require the attorney general to approve such steps.

Trump once again signaled that he is determined to preserve for himself the ability to flagrantly abuse his powers to protect himself from accountability

...an hour after he told reporters he would probably meet with the Russian president.

According to court documents, Cohen admitted that he made the misstatements about the “Moscow Project” – the Trump Organization’s efforts to “pursue a branded property in Moscow” in an August 2017 letter to the House and Senate intelligence committees

Trump downplayed his relationship with Michael Cohen, suggested separating kids from their parents at the border hadn’t been that big a deal, and doubled down on the idea that the Saudis may escape blame for Khashoggi.

The special counsel’s questioning of Cohen [...] has focused primarily on all aspects of Trump's dealings with Russia

One theory on the decision was that Cohen, who pleaded guilty to eight financial fraud charges in August, had nothing to gain from Daniels' silence.

But the bigger picture is that a week after Cohen pleaded guilty to tax, bank fraud, and campaign finance charges — and implicated Trump in the latter of those — Cohen’s role in the larger Trump-Russia saga remains a question mark.

In recent days, one of Michael Cohen's lawyers has repeatedly changed his account of what Cohen knew about President Donald Trump's involvement in a controversial meeting during the 2016 campaign.

Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg, whose entanglements with Trump's finances are extensive, was granted immunity by federal prosecutors for providing information about Trump's former personal attorney Michael Cohen.

...a key witness in their monthslong investigation into payments during the 2016 campaign to two women who said they had affairs with Donald J. Trump

It’s a bit baffling that Trump would assert that criminal charges accepted by Cohen aren’t a crime.

The conviction of Trump’s former campaign chairman, guilty plea of his former personal lawyer and indictment of a leading congressional supporter raise Trump’s risks.

Rather than focusing on what is perhaps the most significant news of Trump's presidency so far, the right-leaning network's hosts discussed the news that police charged an undocumented immigrant with murder in the death of Mollie Tibbetts.

Two of the president's former associates were in court Tuesday. Both guilty of multiple felonies. What happened to draining the swamp?

Cohen ... pleaded guilty to eight counts and said that he made illegal campaign contributions "in coordination and at the direction of a candidate for federal office."

Rather than getting Dean’s legal advice for Cohen, Davis said he has been asking about Dean’s experiences during Watergate to refresh his own memory of the investigation.

The inquiry has entered the final stage and prosecutors are considering filing charges by the end of August

Trump faces potential legal and political danger if it’s proven he knew in advance about a meeting his son and campaign aides had with Russians said to be promising dirt on Hillary Clinton

"He's lied all his life"

...in which Russians were expected to offer his campaign dirt on Hillary Clinton

In other words, not only was Trump aware of the payment by AMI, he even knew the figure.

The audio is muddled and the meaning of Trump's use of the word "cash" is disputed by the two sides.

By burying Ms. McDougal’s story during the campaign in a practice known in the tabloid industry as “catch and kill,” A.M.I. protected Mr. Trump from negative publicity that could have harmed his election chances, spending money to do so.

The special master had designated the recording as privileged, according to two sources familiar with the process, but Trump's lawyers subsequently waived their right to maintain that designation.

A transcript of the recording was reviewed by the Trump legal team, which does not believe it poses a legal problem for the President.

“When he talked about loyalty to his family, what he seemed to be saying was he wants to limit his exposure and potential jail time. That’s cooperation.”

“To be crystal clear, my wife, my daughter and my son, and this country have my first loyalty.”

Cohen just withdrew as a deputy finance chairman of the Republican National Committee.

“Approximately 731 pages of messages, including call logs,” were found on those apps and were turned over to Cohen’s lawyers on Friday to be reviewed for potentially privileged materials like attorney-client communications, as well as “highly personal” information

Cohen has expressed anger with the treatment he has gotten from the President, who has minimized his relationship with Cohen

Cohen's split from Stephen Ryan and co-counsel Todd Harrison could signal a change in legal strategy but does not necessarily indicate that Cohen has decided to cut a deal with federal prosecutors.

The apparent plan is to discredit Cohen by arguing that whatever compromising information he might share about Trump is a lie, concocted to please Mueller's band of witch hunters and save his own skin.

For his part, the Trump attorney has been frustrated by the lack of outreach by the president, whom Cohen has vowed to defend, according to people with knowledge of the situation.

The President also reiterated his belief that he has the power to pardon himself, though he again said he would not do so.

...saying the two men "colluded" and "acted in concert" to "manipulate" Daniels and to benefit Trump.

A court appointed watchdog ... released an initial report Monday which found that relatively few documents in an initial tranche of documents that were seized from Cohen in a raid met the standard of being subject to attorney client privilege.

Prosecutors explained, however, that they would need two to three more weeks to finish reconstructing what was in the shredder

Trump's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, received a secret payment of at least $400,000 (£300,000) to fix talks between the Ukrainian president and President Trump

Cohen has two problems. Trump can’t save him from state charges, and he might have nothing to offer federal investigators if the feds believe that they can’t charge a sitting president.

Evgeny A. Freidman, a Russian immigrant who is known as the Taxi King, specifically agreed to assist government prosecutors in state or federal investigations

...as a process to separate items subject to attorney-client privilege appears to be meeting a judge’s demand that it occur speedily and efficiently.

The mutual broadsides were only the latest round of sparring in a battle between the proxies for Mr. Cohen and Ms. Clifford

...in exchange for access to and advice about the then-incoming administration

The disclosure, released by the Office of Government Ethics, did not specify the purpose of the payment.

It is unclear what insight Cohen — a longtime real estate attorney and former taxicab operator — could have provided AT&T on complex telecom matters.

Sometimes the most convoluted question ... is the most basic: Who is paying whom? The follow-up, which can be even more troubling, is, And for what?

Selling access is common in Washington, but investigators could probe whether Cohen promised specific government actions in exchange for payments, which could cause him legal trouble.

Novartis said Wednesday that it had spoken to lawyers for the special counsel ... about its payments to a shell company controlled by Michael D. Cohen,

“I have no knowledge of that,” Giuliani said. “But I would think if it was necessary, yes.”

Trump knew about a six-figure payment that Michael D. Cohen ... made to a pornographic film actress several months before he denied any knowledge of it to reporters aboard Air Force One in April

The details of the payment, and whether and when Trump knew about it, have important legal implications. A payment intended to protect his campaign from political damage could be a violation of campaign finance law. As a candidate, Trump was permitted to spend an unlimited amount of his own funds on his campaign, but such sums should have been reported to the Federal Election Commission.

CORRECTION: Earlier today, NBC News reported that there was a wiretap on the phones of Michael Cohen...

The president’s tweets on Thursday were far more formal that his usual morning messages to the world, which often include words in all capital letters and are punctuated with exclamation points.

... appearing to contradict Trump’s assertion last month that he was unaware of the payment.

The president's personal attorney represented multiple clients in New York who allegedly staged car crashes to cheat insurance companies

Added to his previous tab, that brings the total to $282,000 owed to New York state by 16 taxi medallion-holding companies owned by Cohen or members of his family

Otero said Friday that the issues in the civil dispute with Daniels overlap with the criminal probe into Cohen.

“This is no simple criminal investigation; it is an investigation into the personal attorney of a sitting President regarding documents that might be subject to the attorney-client privilege. Whether or not an indictment is forthcoming, and the Court thinks it likely based on these facts alone, these unique circumstances counsel in favor of stay.”

Trump [...said...] that his personal attorney Michael Cohen performs only a “a tiny, tiny little fraction” of the president’s legal work.

“We’d talk to you all day but it looks like you have a million things to do”

“Michael represents me, like with this crazy Stormy Daniels deal, he represented me,” Trump said. “And from what I’ve seen, he did absolutely nothing wrong. There were no campaign funds going into this.”

...indicating he would assert his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination regarding his involvement in a hush money deal involving porn star Stormy Daniels and the President.

“Stupid question,” Trump shot back Tuesday when ABC News's Jonathan Karl asked the president whether a pardon was on the table. According to the pool report, the president “glared” at Karl for having the gall to ask it.

Secrecy issues make turning a lawyer against a client a legal minefield

Hannity said he had only “occasional brief conversations” with Cohen. He made varying statements about whether Cohen was compensated, initially stating that he had not been billed but later saying: “I might have handed him 10 bucks.”

But the bottom line is that Cohen's libel suit against BuzzFeed created a risk: Daniels might have been forced to turn over documents that Cohen and Trump want to keep out of public view. Cohen eliminated the risk by dropping the suit.

"We believe the defendants defamed my client, and vindicating Mr. Cohen’s rights was — and still remains — important. But given the events that have unfolded, and the time, attention, and resources needed to prosecute these matters, we have dismissed the matters, despite their merits."

Wood said at a hearing Monday that she might grant a request by Cohen’s attorneys to appoint a neutral lawyer known as a “special master” to help resolve some conflicts over attorney-client privilege, though she said she anticipated that person would have a limited role.

The president and his fixer tried to stop the feds from getting their hands on ‘privileged’ information. They failed.

Cohen's attorneys had acknowledged publicly that he represented Trump and former Republican National Committee deputy finance chair Elliott Broidy in legal matters, but they had sought to avoid naming a third client

The letter goes on to say that revealing the identities of Cohen’s clients would be “embarrassing” to them.

In the letter filed Sunday evening, Trump’s attorneys assert that he is the “privilege-holder” in the attorney relationship that is in jeopardy because of the FBI raid.

This is the week we know, with increasing certainty, that we are entering the last phase of the Trump Presidency.

“Cohen is not a criminal defense attorney… and is being investigated for criminal conduct that largely centers on his personal business dealings. Based on information gathered in the investigation to date… Cohen has exceedingly few clients and a low volume of potentially privileged communications."

Prosecutors are "going to be very excited at the prospect of having an independent means of corroborating what was said between the two parties"

Confirmation of the trip would lend credence to a retired British spy’s report that Cohen strategized there with a powerful Kremlin figure about Russian meddling in the U.S. election.

Trump’s advisers have concluded that a wide-ranging corruption investigation into his personal lawyer poses a greater and more imminent threat to the president than even the special counsel’s investigation

Lawyers for President Donald Trump and his longtime personal attorney Michael Cohen went to court Friday trying to stop federal prosecutors from getting at private material — but wound up with a judge ordering them to disclose Cohen’s client list in public.

The departure followed reports on Friday afternoon that ... Cohen had negotiated a $1.6 million payment on Broidy’s behalf to a Playboy Playmate who said that Broidy had impregnated her.

Lawyers for Michael Cohen and Donald Trump have formally notified the court Thursday evening that they intend to ask for the case to be stayed, citing Cohen’s Fifth Amendment rights.

If AMI routinely paid for the exclusive rights to stories that it ended up not using — if, that is, the Sajudin situation were something that happened regularly with other payment recipients and other celebrities — the payment may not be easily tied to Trump’s candidacy explicitly.

Now the tabloid company has been drawn into a sweeping federal investigation of Mr. Cohen’s activities, including efforts to head off potentially damaging stories about Mr. Trump during his run for the White House.

The first step, these people say, would be for Trump to fire Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, who oversees the work of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and in recent days signed off on a search warrant of Trump’s longtime personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen.

Prosecutors are interested in whether Mr. Cohen, who had no official role in the 2016 campaign, coordinated with it to quash the release of anything detrimental to it and whether that violated campaign finance laws

The story broke shortly before 4 p.m.; about an hour later, it led the websites of the Drudge Report, ABC News, CNN, NBC, the New York Times and The Washington Post.

...raiding lawyers’ offices isn’t unheard of––but is generally used for lawyers who work with alleged members of organized crime, or for lawyers who are involved themselves in elaborate criminal schemes.

Cohen’s lawyer, Stephen Ryan, said the actions were taken following a “referral” from special counsel Robert Mueller.

FBI officials on Monday raided the Manhattan office of Michael Cohen, the longtime attorney of President Trump, seizing records related to a 2016 payment he made to adult-film star Stormy Daniels, who claimed to have had a sexual encounter with Trump.

Trump’s denial was the first time he’s made a public statement about the money given to Daniels ahead of the 2016 election to keep her silent about her alleged 2006 affair with Trump.

The president has privately expressed relief at the description of his legal status, which has increased his determination to agree to a special counsel interview

In requesting depositions, Avenatti said he “intends to prove that the Hush Agreement did not have a lawful object or purpose.”

Monday's legal maneuver is an additional move in an ongoing suit by Daniels against Cohen, Trump and the limited liability company Cohen has said he established to facilitate a payment to Daniels ahead of the presidential election.

Republican election law expert Trevor Potter said the payout potentially represented an “illegal, in-kind contribution.”

Cohen also intends to force the dispute with Daniels, who alleges she was secretly paid to keep quiet about an affair with the president, out of the public eye and back into private arbitration

Cohen, President Trump’s longtime ally and attorney, had used a Trump Organization email address as he worked to secure the payment to Daniels.

While Cohen was probably trying to put Trump in the clear by saying he had nothing to do with it, his very explanation paints a picture very similar to that of former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards.

A lawyer for President Trump orchestrated a $130,000 payment to a pornographic-film actress in October 2016 to prevent her from going public with claims of a consensual sexual encounter with Mr. Trump, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.

Cohen arrived for the interview with his attorney Tuesday morning, but left the closed door session after about an hour, informing reporters waiting outside that committee staff had suddenly informed him they did not wish the interview to go forward.

...the latest indication that the Russia probe overseen by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III is intensifying and could end up focusing on a number of Trump associates

One of President Donald Trump’s closest confidants, his personal lawyer Michael Cohen, has now become a focus of the expanding congressional investigation