President Donald Trump has repeatedly lashed out at his former attorney and fixer Michael Cohen, calling him “weak” and suggesting that he lied to investigators in order to receive a more lenient sentence. | Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images politics Coons: Trump sounds 'more like a mob boss than president' with Cohen attacks

President Donald Trump’s use of the word “rat” to attack his former personal attorney and fixer Michael Cohen is more evocative of a “mob boss” than of a president, a Democratic senator said Monday.

Sen. Chris Coons, a Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, painted Trump’s claims that the FBI “broke into” Cohen’s office earlier this year — though the bureau had a warrant to do so — as a clear attempt to undermine law enforcement and mislead Americans about the various investigations into the president's dealings.


Trump on Sunday wrote on Twitter that Cohen “only became a ‘Rat’ after the FBI did something which was absolutely unthinkable & unheard of until the Witch Hunt was illegally started." He falsely claimed that the FBI "BROKE INTO AN ATTORNEY’S OFFICE” and rhetorically asked his followers why the FBI had not done the same at the Democratic National Committee to investigate email hacks there, or for Hillary Clinton, who at one point was under investigation by the FBI for her use of a personal email server during her tenure as secretary of state.

“The idea that the FBI broke into his attorney's office runs right up against the foundation of our law, which is the FBI was executing a duly authorized warrant,” Coons said in an interview on CNN’s “New Day.”

“They were executing a warrant issued with the approval of a judge. This is part of how investigations work. His use of the term ‘rat’ for Michael Cohen and mischaracterizing this as a break-in to his attorney's office frankly makes him sound more like a mob boss than president of the United States.”

POLITICO Playbook newsletter Sign up today to receive the #1-rated newsletter in politics Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Spokespeople for the president did not immediately return an email seeking a response to Coons' remarks.

In April, the FBI conducted a raid on Cohen’s office and his apartment in Manhattan, carrying out a search warrant that had been approved by a federal judge.

Cohen, once a staunch Trump loyalist, came under the microscope as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible coordination between Trump’s presidential campaign and Russians looking to influence the 2016 election.

After agreeing to flip on Trump and cooperate with prosecutors, Cohen was sentenced last week to three years in prison for charges of tax evasion and fraud, lying to Congress and campaign-finance violations that Cohen says were hush-money payments made at Trump’s direction to women who alleged having affairs with him.

Trump repeatedly has lashed out at Cohen, calling him “weak” and suggesting that he lied to investigators to receive a more lenient sentence. Cohen, in turn, has said that he is finished lying for the president and no longer feels compelled to cover up Trump’s “dirty deeds.”