Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, was informed about allegations of sexual misconduct by then-New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman around 2013, according to a letter filed in Manhattan federal court on Friday.
An attorney, Peter Gleason, submitted a letter to the court Friday explaining that two women had come to him a half-decade or more ago with complaints that they were “sexually victimized” by Schneiderman.
Counseling against reporting the allegations to Manhattan’s district attorney based on his past experiences with political corruption cases, Gleason says, he discussed the women’s allegations with a retired New York Post journalist, Stephen Dunleavy.
Dunleavy who offered to discuss the matter with Trump. “Mr. Dunleavy did indeed discuss this very matter with Mr. Trump as evidenced by a phone call I received from attorney Michael Cohen,” Gleason, a lawyer in Mahopac, New York, wrote to the judge. “During my communications with Mr. Cohen I shared with him certain details of Schneiderman’s vile attacks on these two women.”
Schneiderman’s lawyer, Isabelle Kirshner, declined to comment.
Gleason’s letter was the latest salvo in a battle over the records seized by the FBI last month from Cohen’s office and residences and electronic devices. The lawyer requested a protective order to seal all correspondence that Cohen may have had about the women, in part to protect their identities as assault victims.
Trump’s potential knowledge of allegations against Schneiderman haven’t previously been dislosed, although the men have publicly feuded over Trump’s business practices. Schneiderman sought to sue Trump University in state court in 2012, and filed a complaint the next year in federal court, claiming the for-profit school defrauded students.
In a tweet on Sept. 11, 2013, Trump took aim at Schneiderman while also referring to New York politicians who’d resigned over allegations of sexual misconduct, Anthony Weiner and Eliot Spitzer.
“Weiner is gone, Spitzer is gone -- next will be lightweight A.G. Eric Schneiderman. Is he a crook? Wait and see, worse than Spitzer or Weiner,” Trump tweeted.
Trump settled the Trump University case in late 2016, after he was elected president, for $25 million.
Schneiderman resigned on May 8, three hours after the New Yorker printed an article detailing how four women, two of whom it identified, accused him of physical violence. The resignation followed years of legislative and legal advocacy by Schneiderman for women’s rights, including protecting women from physical and sexual abuse.
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