Treasury Department’s Inspector General Wants To Know How Avenatti Got Cohen’s Confidential Bank Records

The saga continues.

According to this, the Treasury Department’s inspector general wants to know how Stormy Daniels’ lawyer Michael Avenatti got his hands on Michael Cohen’s bank records. There’s a possibility they were “improperly disseminated” and whatnot.

The inspector general’s counsel, Rich Delmar, said that the office is looking into allegations that Suspicious Activity Reports filed about Cohen’s banking transactions were “improperly disseminated,” according to the Post.

Avenatti on Tuesday went public with detailed claims about Cohen’s banking history, including allegations that he received $500,000 from a company controlled by a Russian oligarch in the months following the 2016 presidential election.

Again, Avenatti won’t disclose how he accessed this information.

“The source or sources of our information is our work product, and nobody’s business,” Avenatti stated. “They can investigate all they want, but what they should be doing is releasing to the American public the three Suspicious Activity Reports filed on Michael Cohen’s account. Why are they hiding this information?”

Avenatti refused to reveal his source for this information and said investigators should reveal the Suspicious Activity Reports filed on Cohen’s account.

Such reports are filed if an unusual transaction of over $10,000 is made, and experts told the Post that Avenatti’s information could have come from a report filed by Cohen’s bank.

Banks often file such reports to detect for money laundering or other illegal behavior.

Cohen’s bank, First Republic, declined the Post’s request for comment.

More:

Experts say the information Avenatti published could have come from a SAR filed by Cohen’s bank to Treasury.

“This has the appearance of a leak,” said Daniel P. Stipano, former deputy chief counsel in the Treasury’s Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. “It shouldn’t happen, but things leak.”

Guess we’ll see where this one goes. It’s not over, and it feels like it never will be.

h/t The Hill