Cohen bank report leaker apparently known...

The identity of the law enforcement official who supplied details of Michael Cohen’s banking activities to media-savvy lawyer Michael Avenatti probably won’t remain secret for long, according to people who work in the field.

Anyone who gains access to the government’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network database of bank-generated suspicious activity reports, known as SARs, leaves an audit trail, they explained. So whoever searched for FinCEN reports filed against personal or business accounts associated with Cohen, President Donald Trump’s longtime personal lawyer, left a digital record that is almost certainly under review.

The individual provided an explanation for the leak in an interview with Ronan Farrow of the New Yorker, who referred to the person as an official and not as a man or woman. The official says that he grew alarmed that he was unable to find two earlier reports made by First Republic Bank about transactions in Cohen’s consulting account and that he feared information was being withheld from law enforcement officials.

According to people involved in SARs work, reports don’t vanish from the FinCEN database, either. Sometimes they are restricted, for example when the disclosure might compromise a criminal investigation, or when they involve a law enforcement employee who might himself be suspected of corruption or other wrongdoing.

So, the bottom line was that it was (as suspected) a Government official who leaked the information about Michael Cohen's bank records. The Government official apparently sees themselves as some sort of whistle blower who felt they were exposing some sort of cover up. But according to their own procedures and guidelines, the more plausible explanation would be that the reports were not missing, but rather had restricted access due to a possible criminal investigation.

It becomes increasingly difficult to trust and defend our law enforcement community when they continue to see themselves as above the law.