Trump knew of harassment allegations against NY AG years ago, says lawyer

By Avery Anapol - 05/11/18 12:55 PM EDT

An attorney is seeking a protective order on any correspondence that President Trump's personal lawyer Michael Cohen may have had about two women who made allegations of sexually inappropriate behavior by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.

The filing by attorney Peter Gleason to U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood says that Cohen and Trump both knew of allegations against Schneiderman years before they surfaced.

Gleason writes in a court filing that “some years ago,” his office was approached by multiple women who claimed that Schneiderman had been “sexually inappropriate with them.”

Schneiderman resigned earlier this week just hours after the New Yorker reported on the allegations of nonconsensual physical misconduct against him from four women.

Gleason writes that he discussed the allegations with Stephen Dunleavy, a retired journalist, who in turn offered to discuss the situation with Trump.

Gleason says he knows that Dunleavy talked to Trump about the matter because of a call from Cohen.

“Mr. Dunleavy did indeed discuss this very matter with Mr. Trump as evidenced by a phone call I received from Attorney Michael Cohen,” Gleason writes in the filing. “During my communications with Mr. Cohen I shared with him certain details of Scheinderman’s [sic] vile attacks on these two women.”

Gleason is now seeking the protective order on any documents involving the Schneiderman allegations that may have been seized in the recent FBI raid of Cohen’s office.

The revelations from Gleason cast new light on a Trump tweet sent in September 2013.

“Weiner is gone, Spitzer is gone - next will be lightweight A.G. Eric Schneiderman,” Trump wrote in the tweet. “Is he a crook? Wait and see, worse than Spitzer or Weiner.”

As New York’s Democratic attorney general, Schneiderman was a prominent legal force against the Trump administration, leading numerous lawsuits against the president’s policies.

One of the authors of the New Yorker story said neither Trump nor Cohen were sources for their story, and that their sources were also not people connected to Trump.

http://thehill.com/homenews/administ...years-ago-says