{"id":12488,"date":"2018-08-23T10:22:53","date_gmt":"2018-08-23T10:22:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=12488"},"modified":"2018-08-23T10:22:53","modified_gmt":"2018-08-23T10:22:53","slug":"former-trump-lawyer-cohen-subpoenaed-in-trump-charity-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=12488","title":{"rendered":"Former Trump lawyer Cohen subpoenaed in Trump charity case"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

New York state’s tax department has subpoenaed Michael Cohen, the beleaguered former lawyer of US<\/a> President Donald Trump<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The subpoena is in connection with a probe of the Trump Foundation charity and comes a day after Cohen pleaded guilty<\/a> to eight criminal charges, including tax evasion, bank fraud, and campaign finance violations.<\/p>\n

“We can confirm that a subpoena has been issued to Michael Cohen for relevant information in light of the public disclosures made yesterday,” James Gazzale, a spokesman for the state’s tax department, told The Associated Press.<\/p>\n

Shortly after his guilty plea, Cohen’s attorney Lanny David said in an interview<\/a>\u00a0that Cohen has information that “would be of interest both in Washington as well as New York state”.<\/p>\n

Any evidence of alleged crimes related to the charity will be referred to state Attorney-General Barbara Underwood.<\/p>\n

In June, she filed a lawsuit<\/a> against Trump, his children Ivanka, Eric and Donald Jr, and the foundation for allegedly using the charity for his own benefit, including his 2016 presidential campaign.<\/p>\n

The Trump Foundation issued a statement criticising the lawsuit as “politics at its very worst” and accusing the attorney-general of holding its $1.7m in remaining funds “hostage for political gain”.<\/p>\n

Among the transactions the lawsuit called illegal was a $10,000 payment to the Unicorn Children’s Foundation for a portrait of Trump purchased at a fundraising auction in 2014. The portrait ended up decorating a wall at Trump’s Doral golf resort near Miami, the Washington Post first reported.<\/p>\n

Buying silence<\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n

Earlier this week, Cohen said he had paid sums of $130,000 and $150,000 each to two women who claimed they had affairs with Trump, acting at his boss’ request, in a bid to buy their silence “with the purpose of influencing the election”.<\/p>\n

He did not name the women nor Trump, but said it was “in coordination and at the direction of a candidate for federal office”, and the other was made “under direction of the same candidate”.<\/p>\n

The payments to the women could be regarded as an illegal campaign expenditure if the money was clearly meant to influence the 2016 election.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New York state’s tax department has subpoenaed Michael Cohen, the beleaguered former lawyer of US President Donald Trump. The subpoena is in connection with a probe of the Trump Foundation charity and comes a day after Cohen pleaded guilty to eight criminal charges, including tax evasion, bank fraud, and campaign finance violations. “We can confirm…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":12489,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12488\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}