Donald Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen dined out with ad exec and MSNBC regular Donny Deutsch on Wednesday, just two days after his office and hotel room were raided by the FBI.
Cohen and the Morning Joe contributor dined at Freds, the restaurant on the ninth floor in Barneys on Madison Avenue, which is just blocks away from the Loews Regency on Park Avenue, where his room was raided on Monday.
The pair made no secret of their lunch date, leaving the department store together when the meal was over.
Michael Cohen, right, had lunch on Wednesday with Donny Deutsch
Deutsch is contributor to MSNBC’s Morning Joe, which has been critical of the president
In January Donny was romantically linked to Trump’s second ex-wife Marla Maples
The lunch also comes just three months after Deutsch, who is divorced and has three daughters, was romantically linked to Trump’s second ex-wife Marla Maples.
Cohen hasn’t been hiding since the raid.
He spent Wednesday walking around the neighborhood, also stopping in at a bank. On Tuesday night he dined out at the French restaurant La Goulue.
Deutsch, who made a fortune when he sold the family ad company for $265million in 2000, is a self-proclaimed Democrat.
Lunch comes just two days after Cohen was raided at his office and hotel room, here at the Loews Regency, where agents seized records related to $130,000 paid to Stormy Daniels
He also ran errands Wednesday, stopped by a TD Bank
Agents also seized records related to a $130,000 payment made to Stormy Daniels, who says she had sex with Trump the same year as Playboy model Karen McDougal.
Cohen has said he paid Daniels out of his own pocket shortly before the 2016 presidential election, but has not explained why.
Cohen has said neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign was involved in the transaction with Daniels and he was not reimbursed for the payment. Trump has said he didn’t know about the payment. The White House has consistently said Trump denies the affair.
In his first public comments since the raid, Cohen told CNN on Tuesday that he is rethinking how he handled the payment to Daniels because of what it has done to his family.
Not staying in: On Tuesday night he dined at La Goulue, a French restaurant also near his hotel. He had admitted earlier in the day to being worried
Asked if he was worried, Cohen said: ‘I would be lying to you if I told that I am not. Do I need this in my life? No. Do I want to be involved in this? No.’
Cohen has been involved in the New York City yellow cab industry since the 1990s, going into business with his Ukraine-born father-in-law.
Some of his companies that owned medallions were given names such as NY Funky Taxi Corp, Mad Dog Cab Corp and Sir Michael Hacking Corp.
Although he has said publicly that he got out of the business in the mid-2000s, city, state and court records show he and his wife own as many as 30 medallions.
Tax records show some of his companies currently owe thousands of dollars in mandatory per-ride state transportation taxes.
In recent years, his taxis were managed by Gene Freidman, the so-called Taxi King of New York and a close friend. Freidman was charged last year by state prosecutors with pocketing $5 million in state transportation taxes. He’s pleaded not guilty.