Page:Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference In The 2016 Presidential Election.pdf/357

 with the President before he ran for office. This Office did not investigate Cohen's campaign-period payments to women. However, those events, as described here, are potentially relevant to the President's and his personal counsel's interactions with Cohen as a witness who later began to cooperate with the government.

On February 13, 2018, Cohen released a statement to news organizations that stated, "In a private transaction in 2016, I used my own personal funds to facilitate a payment of $130,000 to [the woman]. Neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign was a party to the transaction with [the woman], and neither reimbursed me for the payment, either directly or indirectly." In congressional testimony on February 27, 2019, Cohen testified that he had discussed what to say about the payment with the President and that the President had directed Cohen to say that the President "was not knowledgeable of [Cohen's] actions" in making the payment. On February 19, 2018, the day after the New York Times wrote a detailed story attributing the payment to Cohen and describing Cohen as the President's "fixer," Cohen received a text message from the President's personal counsel that stated, "Client says thanks for what you do."

On April 9, 2018, FBI agents working with the U.S, Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York executed search warrants on Cohen's home, hotel room, and office. That day, the President spoke to reporters and said that he had "just heard that they broke into the office of one of my personal attorneys—a good man." The President called the searches "a real disgrace" and said, "It's an attack on our country, in a true sense. It's an attack on what we all