Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Are The Feds Tapping Michael Cohen’s Phone Calls?

On Thursday, NBC reported that federal investigators “tapped” phones belonging to Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s longtime lawyer. The report, which cited two anonymous sources, said that the wiretapping had been in place in the weeks before an FBI raid on Michael Cohen’s office and living space.

But almost immediately after the report was published, it was met with skepticism by legal experts.

“Wiretaps are difficult to get,” tweeted Preet Bharara, former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. “Also they signify proof of an ongoing crime. And you don’t tap a President’s attorney lightly.”

Within a few hours, NBC had revised their story and issued a correction: The story now reported that federal investigators had been monitoring the list of calls placed by phones belonging to Michael Cohen — not a live wiretap that allowed them to listen to conversations. The log is commonly called a pen register, and lists the sender and receiver of the phone calls.

NBC reported, based on two anonymous sources close to Rudy Giuliani, one of Trump’s current lawyers, that Cohen had told Trump not to call him on a particular phone because he believed it to be bugged.

On Friday morning, Trump tweeted his response to the report.


Contact Ari Feldman at [email protected] or on Twitter @aefeldman

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.