An Internal Revenue Service employee has been charged with leaking confidential government reports that described financial transactions made by President Donald Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen, according to court documents unsealed Thursday.
John Fry, an investigative analyst with the IRS in San Francisco, was charged with the unauthorized disclosure of suspicious activity reports, or SARs. Such reports are meant to flag potentially unlawful financial conduct to government investigators but do not necessarily indicate wrongdoing.
According to the documents, unsealed in federal court in San Francisco, Fry is accused of sharing the reports’ contents with Michael Avenatti, a lawyer who rose to national prominence representing adult-film actress Stormy Daniels in litigation arising from her claims of a sexual encounter with Trump more than a decade ago. Cohen pleaded guilty last year to arranging hush-money payments to Daniels and another woman who alleged affairs with Trump.