CPL Avenatti, Michael Cohen

An analyst with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) was charged for leaking Michael Cohen’s bank records to creepy porn lawyer Michael Avenatti and The New Yorker.

CNN reported that the analyst was charged by the US Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California with unauthorized disclosure of a suspicious activity report, or SAR. Banks file SARs on any transactions that could be illegal.

Via NBC News:

John Fry, has been charged with leaking Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) belonging to Michael Cohen to attorney Michael Avenatti and a reporter for the New Yorker. TRENDING: Unhinged Quebec Woman Pascale Ferrier Identified as Suspect in Case of Ricin Letter Sent to Trump White House The complaint says that Fry admitted to disclosing the confidential records when confronted by agents. Fry, according to the complaint, works as an investigative analyst for the IRS’s law enforcement arm, the Criminal Investigation Division. Documents say he accessed databases and conducted specific searches.

Fry, according to the complaint, works as an investigative analyst for the IRS's law enforcement arm, the Criminal Investigation Division. Documents say he accessed databases and conducted specific searches. — Tom Winter (@Tom_Winter) February 21, 2019

Last week it was reported that the Department of Justice was investigating the leak of Michael Cohen’s confidential bank records.

REWIND-

On April 9, 2018 FBI agents raided the office of one of Trump’s personal lawyers Michael Cohen at the request of Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Michael Cohen was President Trump’s personal attorney at the time.

The Mueller mob took all of his records and emails.

One month later — Cohen’s financial documents were leaked to the porn star Stormy Daniels’s shady attorney Michael Avenatti.

Michael Cohen made a “hush payment” to porn star Stormy Daniels through Essential Consultants LLC, a shell company that Mr. Cohen created — A lawyer representing Cohen insisted his bank records were illegally obtained.

Michael Avenatti refused to divulge his source of the bank records but he suggested Cohen’s bank transactions were in a SAR, or ‘suspicious activity report.’

A bank will file a SAR with the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network if certain transactions raise red flags. It is illegal for a bank to disclose the contents or identity of a SAR.

The Treasury Department’s inspector general previously launched an investigation into how Stormy Daniels’s lawyer Michael Avenatti obtained confidential banking records concerning a company controlled by Michael Cohen — that investigation is still ongoing.

Shortly after Michael Avenatti posted Michael Cohen’s bank records online last May, a “law enforcement official” admitted to The New Yorker to leaking Cohen’s bank records.

According to the official who leaked the report, these sars were absent from the database maintained by the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or fincen. The official, who has spent a career in law enforcement, told me, “I have never seen something pulled off the system. . . . That system is a safeguard for the bank. It’s a stockpile of information. When something’s not there that should be, I immediately became concerned.” The official added, “That’s why I came forward.”

The name of the leaker was withheld from the public until he was charged Thursday.

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