Preet Bharara: 'High' Likelihood Michael Cohen Is Going To Be Charged

The former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York was fired by Trump last year.

Former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara had grim news for President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, whose office was just raided by the FBI: Charges are likely coming.

Getting a search warrant to raid a lawyer’s office is a big deal ― especially if that lawyer is counsel to the sitting president of the United States, he said during his appearance on Anderson Cooper’s CNN show Tuesday night.

Bharara, who was fired from his post as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York last year, the very office that executed the raid on Cohen’s home and office, said that if he were the one who had to approve such a move, he would want a lot more evidence than probable cause.

“So I predict, as we saw with Paul Manafort, that if they decided they had enough evidence to engage in a very aggressive move, then the likelihood that Michael Cohen is going to be charged is high,” he said, without elaborating on what those charges might be.

The Washington Post reported Cohen is under investigation for potential bank fraud, wire fraud and campaign finance violations.

The U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York executed the raid, but Bharara’s successor, U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman, was recused from the Cohen investigation. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who is overseeing Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election, personally signed off on the warrant.

Bharara was fired from his post in March 2017 after he says he refused to return Trump’s phone call. Since then, he has taken a contributor position with CNN and has emerged as a vocal critic of the president, often providing sharp responses to Trump’s many tweets.

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