The U.S. charged an Internal Revenue Service analyst with illegally disclosing suspicious activity reports related to the private banking information of Michael Cohen, the former personal lawyer of President Donald Trump.
John C. Fry, 54, was an analyst with the IRS’s law enforcement arm in San Francisco, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. After searching for activity reports related to Cohen and an entity Cohen created, Essential Consultants LLC, Fry shared the information with attorney Michael Avenatti, according to a federal court filing Thursday by an agent for the Treasury Department.
Cohen created Essential to facilitate a hush payment to Stephanie Clifford, the adult actress known as Stormy Daniels, to keep her from disclosing a tryst she says she had with Trump in 2006. Avenatti is Daniels’s lawyer.